Note: This isn’t going to be an explicit guide on how to add a dongle to any ZMK board. I will create a post for that later. Background I’ve since daily driven the Swan40 for quite a while, and it’s been working perfectly… on my desktop. Since it’s been working out so well, I wanted to make another one to have on-the-go, for use with my laptop. However, this is where some problems appeared....
Tricks In my goals for this project, my number one goal was really the battery life. However, on a tiny split keyboard, I have not seen any good battery mounting methods that do not involve tenting the keyboard to make space below it or having it on the side. I want the battery to be part of the keyboard such that the keyboard’s physical footprint doesn’t have to extend too much to accommodate for it....
Note: You can find the relevant files of this project in the Swan40 GitHub repository. Goals Hardware On-off switch (Like the Corne) There should be a switch to disconnect the battery on the hardware level. Usage of a XIAO nRF52840 It should utilize Seeed Studio’s XIAO nRF52840 as the controller. (This was a cost-cutting measure; the nice!nano, a commonly used bluetooth microcontroller, costs about 26€ a piece excl. shipping, while this board costs only $10....
Disclaimer This is not intended for the average reader. Lots of keyboard jargon is used for the sake of convenience. A Little Background Just skip to the next post if you don’t want to hear my life’s story :D I’m really into keyboards. In particular, mechanical keyboards. I started just about how most people enter this space: “Clicky keyboards are cool”. Well, that is, until they were annoying. Since then, I’ve been on and endless pursuit of the “perfect” keyboard....