Now I have to patiently wait for them to ship. I’m not shy about the Sweep inspiration.

The goal is to have it be modular, with a central controller board. I’m going to eventually use these with paracord cables to hot-plug different types of keyboards (the first will most likely be a gaming keyboard on the left). I’m looking for less bulky magnetic connectors if anyone knows a source. Definitely not considering a TRRS, as I don’t think my GPIOs should be mainlining 5V during hotplugging.

The controller is still being prototyped on a breadboard. I have already experienced the woes of hot-plugging I2C on the prototype boards (stuck bus and all), so I’m going to experiment with the TCA4307.

The firmware is being developed in Rust, though haven’t pushed it anywhere yet.

https://codeberg.org/jcdickinson/octoboard

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Nope, ESP32 is better in every way except that it costs 2x as much due to the integrated BT and WiFi. The chip only for the RP2040 is 0.92€, supporting components bring it to about 1.50€ compared to the standard ESP32-WROOM module for 2.50€. If you don’t need WiFi/bt, then volume production will make a difference there.

      Otherwise yeah, fully go for the ESP32. The DACs are much more linear too due to a bug in RP2040.

      Though the RP2040 does have integrated USB which makes it compatible with QMK for hobbyists.

      Teensy boards are one of the most powerful hobbyist microcontrollers readily available, but they also come at 10x the price.