The ish, yet another Corne-ish keyboard
The ish is a Corne-ish split 42-key keyboard, specifically designed for the nice!nano, bluetooth/battery operation, and ZMK.
The ish has the following features/anti-features:
- Support for both Choc v1 and Cherry MX switches, which can be used at the same time
- Keys are Cherry MX spaced (I have fat fingers)
- Designed for battery and bluetooth, via the nice!nano controller
- Does not have LEDs, underglow or otherwise, nor OLED displays
- Relatively easy to build
- Based on the Corne v3
As of v2.0, the ish is known to work with a regular non-LED non-display Corne profile using KMK and ZMK, including as a wired split. It has been tested with nice!nano v2 and Adafruit Kee-boar controller.
If you want to use something other than a nice!nano, do not connect the battery. I'm not aware of another pro micro compat controller, other than the nice!nano, with battery circuitry. You will most likely fry any other controller and probably damage the battery and maybe cause a fire.
Well, gotta learn kicad somehow and the Corne is one of my favorite boards. Like all keyboard people though, I have capital-T Thoughts about the Corne so why not learn kicad by tweaking the Corne.
Also to be clear, this is built with me, sungo, in mind. I will be super thrilled if other folks like it but this board is to make me happy and serve as a learning experience.
The gerbers for the v1.0 are available here. Top and bottom plates are available as well though regular Corne plates work just fine if you have those already.
Gerbers for v2.0 are coming soon
- a choc build based on the Corne v3 platform. The v3 simplified the board a great deal, particularly by making it not reversible.
- Wireless first. Built specifically for the nice!nano, the ish comes with battery wiring and a power switch
- Fuck LEDs. I don't use LEDs or OLEDs on my battery builds so they're gone
- All going well, don't change anything that would break compatibility with the Corne v3 plates
AKA arbitrary rules I made up for myself
- Fuck branding. If you've ever read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, I have a branding allergy similar to Cayce Pollard. I hate that most keyboards come slathered in URLs, cute logos, names, etc.
- Limit the amount of traces on the top surface
- Put as few traces on the top surface under the MCU as possible (It's way too easy to crap up a board by cutting traces while trying to get a stuck hotswap MCU off the board)
- Limit soldering to one side
- Keep solder points and electronics away from the edges
- On an individual board, diodes all go the same direction
This is the result of a few of the design principles. The Corne v2 and the Corne v3 end up putting diodes and solder pads on the edge of the board on one half because there's no where else for them to go. On the other side, one direction conflicts with the standoff annular ring placement. So, if I want to keep the diodes and pads away from the board edge and I don't want to move the annular rings, one half of the board must have switches that go the other direction. If I toss my rule against breaking v3 plate compatibility, I'll revisit this.
These parts were specifically used in the design process. If you find other working options, please let me know.
- Two nice!nano controllers soldered with machine pins
- Two PCM12SMTR slide switches
- Two EVQ-P7A01P momentary switches
- Two S02B-XASS-1 JST connectors
- Two lithpoly batteries with protection circuits - the protection circuits are really important as the ish has no onboard battery management of its own
- 42 diodes
- Machine pin headers that, once installed, are at least 4mm tall to fit the battery
- 42 Choc v1 hotswap sockets, switches and caps and/or 42 Cherry/MX hostswap sockets, switches and caps
The original Corne is licensed under the MIT license so the ish is as well.
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Corne v3, kbd library © 2019-2022 foostan
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