A Fun Low-Cost Start For Your Macropad Hobby
If you have been at any time wanting for a tiny comforting evening undertaking that you could then use day-to-working day, you gotta look at the Pico Hat Pad kit by [Natalie the Nerd]. It suits squarely within just the Pi Pico variety-component, supplying you two buttons, 1 rotary encoder and two independently addressable LEDs to perform with. Originally, this macropad was intended as an below-$20 machine which is also a soldering practice kit, and [Natalie] has knocked it out of the park.
You make this macropad out of a stack of three PCBs — the middle 1 connecting the Pi Pico heart to the buttons, encoders and LEDs, and the remaining types adding structural assist and security. All the PCBs suit alongside one another into a neat tab-linked panel — completely ready to be thrown into your favorite PCB service’s procuring cart. Under the hood, this macropad makes use of KMK, a CircuitPython-primarily based keyboard firmware, with the configuration open-supply. In point everything is open-supply, just the way we like it.
If you locate on your own with an unexpected affinity for macropads after assembling this just one, do not worry. It is pretty a widespread side-effect. Thankfully, there are cures, and it’s no more time unavoidable that you are going to go bananas about it. That reported, if you’re combating the urges to go larger, you can test a distinctive hand-wireable Pico-based macropad with a few far more keys. Arrive to find that a single not enough? Here’s a 2×4 3D printable one particular.
Now, if you ultimately come across by yourself studying each and every one Keebin’ With Kristina episode as shortly as it will come out, you may well be also much long gone, and we’ll soon find you investing hundreds of pounds creating tiny OLED screens into person keys — in which circumstance, make guaranteed you document it and share it with us!
Some tacked headers, an ec11 rotary encoder, two switches and a Pico: Pico hat pad!
Made to be a cheap and uncomplicated macropad and a solder practice package. Powered by #KMK applying #circuitpython https://t.co/SVbF7X6Gto
(Kicad documents will be uploaded quickly) pic.twitter.com/AK7Sn8ceNE— natalie (@natalie_thenerd) December 19, 2022
