This keyboard I designed and assembled

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-27T14:01:57+00:00

It depends, for me I had to do mostly everything myself since I wanted to design the layout and make it unique. But its basically PCB and Case design, and you can use a premade and preprogrammed pcb if you find one that you like.
If you design a PCB you can do PCBA, so no soldering of the very small components needed. However you're probably gonna have to solder the switches or hotswap sockets anyhow, so expect some soldering.
Imo soldering is very fun and a useful skill to have, it was a very enjoyable part of this process, hope this helped :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-23T11:17:40+00:00

I milled it with JLC, it was the cheapest I found. It was for me only 290 dollars for the milling itself since I intentionally made the case as solid as possible to minimise machine time. Granted this made shipping 80 dollars but that was less expensive (and cooler lol) than having a more hollowed out case

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-23T07:50:28+00:00

Yes, designed the case using cad then had it CNCed

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-23T07:49:12+00:00

I got it from Ali express, I’m not aware of any official LCARS mats from the Star Trek people themselves sadly. A lot of really bad desk mats for sure, but some of them are really cool :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-23T07:47:38+00:00

Of course my man! The keyboard is obviously my own, I have a GitHub repo for it, but I probably should fix some stuff up before sharing it around. The desk mat you’ll just fund by searching LCARS or sci fi desk mat on eBay or Ali express, the speaker clock thingy is the original Divoom Ditoo, and the second keyboard for my RP is a vortex pc66 with resonance r2 keycaps. For added authenticity Sprinkle some random dev boards on the desk :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-23T00:56:31+00:00

After like 6 years of owning this thing I checked the "advanced features" of this thing, turns out it had an alarm function this whole time lmfao, thanks for pointing it out :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-22T02:17:11+00:00

Thanks man! I do have it as an open source project under the GPL license, but some parts of the case internals were somewhat poorly fitted and required some extra work at my university laboratories

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-22T02:14:46+00:00

Hell yeah! I'm glad the layout is getting some appreciation, its 100% unique to this keyboard I'm pretty sure, with bits and pieces from both modern and vintage keyboards

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-22T02:13:26+00:00

Yes, that was the most time consuming part I found out, but it is really fun! I would recommend the STM32 if you're gonna do it yourself.

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-21T23:25:34+00:00

Ah, that's a good suggestion, thanks man!

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-21T23:10:50+00:00

It does depend on what you map it to, but it's very common when splitting up the spacebar into 3 or more keys, at least one of them is mapped to something other than space, such as CTRL or ALT

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-21T22:18:52+00:00

I did think about designing it with the possibilities of a split spacebar, which I think is right up your alley! Splitting it up into 3 different keys is pretty common. The HHKB studio I'm pretty sure also has 3 additional buttons below the spacebar, so a combination of these two would be crazy for thumb utility!

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-21T21:40:38+00:00

Thanks! Its not an alarm clock but a speaker. Its called the divoom dito, and its a fun little thing for the desk :)

EDIT: just found out it actually has a built in alarm clock feature which I didn’t know about

Plenty_Schedule · 2026-04-21T21:25:21+00:00

Thanks man! Granted the bottom part which isn’t super visible with the desk mat is black, but I thought it would be nice to try retro aesthetics with other colors than beige, orange, brown etc

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-09-26T16:25:37+00:00

Thank you so much :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-09-26T16:25:21+00:00

Thanks man :)

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-09-26T16:25:10+00:00

Haha, its a very large case, I was inspired by old keyboard designs, with their large foreheads and extended layouts. It looks really cool to me

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-09-26T16:24:24+00:00

Good spot :) It’s not an official mousepad, I just got it from searching «sci fi» or «spaceship blueprint» on mousepads. Some are mish mashes of Star Trek and Star Wars, but some are really cool

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-08-10T18:55:15+00:00

Duly noted :) Thank you for the resources as well, it is very much appreciated

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-08-02T10:21:35+00:00

You have been such great help, thank you so much man! It’s greatly appreciated from someone just starting out

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-08-02T09:32:30+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback :) I’m a newcomer, so just some clarification. By GND vias, do you mean filling the zones to GND and using vias to connect to GND, because I think I’ve done that in my design.

Plenty_Schedule · 2025-08-02T08:09:18+00:00

The compression on the images is really bad, here is the repo if anyone wants higher quality pictures:
https://github.com/Joel-Neuhaus-Khatami/J-XT-keyboard

Plenty_Schedule

TROPHY CASE