In the event you have been ever on the lookout for a small enjoyable night time mission that it is advisable then use day by day, you gotta believe the Pico Hat Pad package by means of [Natalie the Nerd]. It suits squarely inside the Pi Pico form-factor, providing you with two buttons, one rotary encoder and two in my opinion addressable LEDs to play with. To begin with, this macropad was once meant as an under-$20 software that’s additionally a soldering apply package, and [Natalie] has knocked it out of the park.
You construct this macropad out of a stack of 3 PCBs — the center one connecting the Pi Pico middle to the buttons, encoders and LEDs, and the rest ones including structural fortify and coverage. All of the PCBs are compatible in combination right into a neat tab-connected panel — in a position to be thrown into your favourite PCB provider’s buying groceries cart. Underneath the hood, this macropad makes use of KMK, a CircuitPython-based keyboard firmware, with the configuration open-source. If truth be told the whole lot is open-source, simply the way in which we love it.
When you’re with an surprising affinity for macropads after assembling this one, don’t panic. It’s rather a commonplace side-effect. Thankfully, there are remedies, and it’s now not inevitable that you just’ll move bananas about it. That mentioned, when you’re combating the urges to move larger, you’ll be able to take a look at a unique hand-wireable Pico-based macropad with 3 extra keys. Come to search out that one now not sufficient? Right here’s a 2×4 3-D printable one.
Now, when you sooner or later in finding your self studying each and every unmarried Keebin’ With Kristina episode as quickly because it comes out, you may well be too a long way long past, and we’ll quickly in finding you spending loads of greenbacks development tiny OLED displays into particular person keys — wherein case, remember to record it and percentage it with us!
Some tacked headers, an ec11 rotary encoder, two switches and a Pico: Pico hat pad!
Designed to be an inexpensive and simple macropad and a solder apply package. Powered by means of #KMK the usage of #circuitpython https://t.co/SVbF7X6Gto
(Kicad recordsdata might be uploaded quickly) percent.twitter.com/AK7Sn8ceNE— natalie (@natalie_thenerd) December 19, 2022