Ergodox - Day five - Finished components soldering
2 min read

Ergodox - Day five - Finished components soldering

Ergodox - Day five - Finished components soldering

Last light and early this morning (I've finished at 01:30 AM) I've completed the soldering of electronic components (diodes, Teensy, condenser...)

Ergo-board-01

It looks fine and it was easier than I thought it would be (barring in mind it took me more than 2 hours to finish). There are several things I learned:

  • Using paste on non-SMD stuff is a no-no. It's too messy and you need a lot of paste to do stuff. If you don't have the proper dispensing method it's not going to work.
  • My solder iron sucks. It sort-of-works, but it has a flat-ish tip and it looks (and feels) like the wrong tool for fine electronics
  • Pliers and tweezers are essential
  • You can solder wire with the hot air gun. It's cool, but you need an electrical one

I was surprised to see the teensy blinking after plugging in the USB. And, once the firmware was loaded, the device was recognised as a keyboard:

Ergo-board-02

Here's the full keyboard:

Ergo-board-03

Getting inspiration form a testing thread, I've shorted some switch points and... VOILA!

Ergo-board-04

It's alive!

Next steps:

  1. Picking up switches,
  2. soldering the switches and leds
  3. Assembly