Today we have received 1.4 Printed Circuit Boards as well as 1.0 Membrane keypads.
If everything comes up as we planned, then it’s a second-to-last version of the PCB before going into production. It already fully corresponds to the description on the web- site, everything is supported by KeyboardOS to a greater or lesser extent, and all this already functions.
On the other hand, as you could have noticed, this is only the left half of the keyboard, since in the previous iteration we did not generate the right one, this time we decided to work only with the left one, and when we cope with it successfully, we will redraw the right one as well.
It takes approximately one week for manual assembly. But we are busy with our work on screen drivers so that we can conveniently and easily display and update information on them, as well as work with graphics, create menus, etc.
In a nutshell about the keypads. They are completely identical on both sides, moreover, they are even cheaper in production in comparison with the film. They do not have such drawbacks of the film as the absence of tracks intersections. Furthermore, they turned out to be symmetric on both sides, which means when the contacts wear out (in 2-5 years, depending on the load and operating conditions) they can be flipped and reused to increase the lifespan twice as much. Alternatively, we can remove and use mechanical switches. In such a way, we will receive a super universal thing, which nobody has done before us.
Right now, as I have already mentioned, we are finishing our work with the screen. Next week we have an upgrade of the firmware loader so that it can also be easily updated in the background or just by dragging and dropping the file into a folder on the disk. And on the technical side, we still have to work on USB. We are planning to finish it in September.