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by mamcx 917 days ago
A particularly well-suited project is to make a (mech) keyboard.

It is good because the basics are simple, and you can "complicate" it in any dimension:

- Weird shape? Check - Add a trackball? Check - Crazy layout? Check - Add a mini-lcd screen? Check - Get nuts with actuation points? Check

It has a large and healthy community, and people are receptive to nuts ideas.
2 comments
opan 917 days ago
Agreed that keyboards are a good early project. To add to that, if you play video games, leverless arcade controllers can be a fun build also. Pretty similar overall as far as parts and shape, but the firmware they run (stuff like GP2040-CE or HayBox) make them act as controllers instead of keyboards, and they can even work on game consoles. Specifically I'd recommend the Flatbox rev 5[0] and the Open-Frame1[1].

[0] https://github.com/jfedor2/flatbox

[1] https://github.com/GregTurbo/Open-Frame1

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smrq 917 days ago
Seconding this. It's how I got into electronics myself. I'll add that you can complicate the software in much the same way-- the basics are pretty trivial, but you can go nuts with customization. For one of my keyboards, I implemented my own USB handling using the hardware USB registers just for "fun" (and education, and to be able to say I wrote every line of code running on it).
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