STARS ATC Keyboard with Teensy

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charlesmc

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Hi,

My son is an online air traffic controller for VATSIM and wanted to create a replica STARS ATC keyboard. This is essentially a USB keyboard with 90 keys. Keys will be Cherry MX browns. I'm planning on using matrix addressing with a Teensy 3.2.

I wanted to see if anyone had any comments or corrections on the schematic before I moved on to PCB layout.

This will be implemented via USB cable into the Teensy and then digital I/O to address the matrix. All column pins will be set to outputs and all rows will be set to inputs.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Here is the current schematic.

STARS Schematic v1.jpg

This is what we are trying to replicate.

jed8ypv85az21.jpg
 
I moved ahead with the STARS keyboard. After finishing the PCB design, PCBs were ordered from JLCPCB. Five PCBs (approximately 220 x 200 mm) were $17 total plus $20 for shipping. The PCBs took about one week from file submission to arrival. The mechanical base was designed in Fusion 360 and 3D printed on an Ender 5.

The vSTARS software has some commands that are a combination of keys such as CTRL + F1. I floundered around for a while with the approach for the software for the Teensy 3.2. I had it working using the Keypad.h library and was able to confirm functionality. However, Keypad.h is really limited to just chars, e.g. no combined key presses. I then took a look at QMK, TMK, and Kiibohd, but there seemed to be a lot of information that these were hard to use with the Teensy 3.2 due to the ARM architecture.

I found QMK really difficult to understand, especially when it comes to Teensy 3.2 use, until I ran across this tutorial https://matt3o.com/building-a-keyboard-firmware/ which provided a very clear path to building QMK firmware for the Teensy 3.2. Following the tutorial, the build process worked on the second try after fixing a typo in the keyboard layout definition.

Performing combined key press operations in QMK is as easy as entering say C(KC_F1) in the keyboard definition file...which is translated as press CTRL and press F1 at the same time.

We're waiting on keycaps to arrive, but that will be the last step.

Annotation 2020-06-07 191034.jpg

IMG_2943.jpg

IMG_2946.jpg
 
I'm late to the party, but just wanted to say that one of the best place to get feedback regarding keyboard/firmware build is geekhack.org
Nice project btw !
 
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