My first mechanical keyboard build: fully wireless Lily58 using nice!nano. Never soldered before either. Very happy with the result!
imgur.com/a/UM0qz41/
imgur.comPosted Sep 22, 2020, 12:54 PM UTC
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imgur.comVery nice, i have a helix kit I want to install the n!n to.
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Is that the glow version of the board?
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I don’t think so. I wanted as much battery as possible so I didn’t add any extra components, so glow etc wasn’t something I looked at.
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Take the back plate off. Let's see the solder work.😎
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Next time I’m not using it I will do so!
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Hey what soldering kit did you use?
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I successfully soldered mine including the surface mount LEDs with a Weller wm120 12w/120v soldering iron with 22gauge (.032" dia) no clean Sn63/Pb37 solder.
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I have a friend who works for a university, so I went and used their electrical engineering labs 🤓
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Sorry noob here, I'm about to build one, just waiting for the parts to arrive, but saw the nice!nano and want to do it with it instead of the pro m. Bit my questions are: 1-do I still need to connect the 2 parts with a cable or are both connected via bt to the pc. 2- how much lag it have between the clic of the switch till the action (want to use it for gaming and typing) I mean a small lag won't affect
Thanks
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By pro m do you mean a Pro Micro? I don’t think it’s Bluetooth is it?
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assuming you get two Bluetooth boards, connecting both separately to your computer via Bluetooth will result in it reporting as two partial keyboards, and for example shift on left half + p will not result in capital P. The nice!nano with BlueMicro or ZMK firmware deals with this by having the left connect to the computer and the right connect to the left.
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I cannot discern any lag except for the first one second or so pressing a key after like half an hour or so of not touching the keyboard. I’m fairly sensitive to lag when writing code, but I don’t know how that compares to gaming as the terminal isn’t exactly 120hz.
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🤔 Ok ok, this answere my questions, for the lag part I have a 60hz one, and with an anne pro 2 I can see some lag on the movement after pressing forward for example, that with a bt3.0, but it's minimal, so I think this one may be even less noticeable. And yeah those first seconds after leaving your keyboard alone, are a pain sometimes
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Are you able to switch back and forth between multiple computers connected via bluetooth.
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I have to disconnect on the first computer or go out of range before I can connect on the second computer
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Beautiful! I have two questions: where are the batteries, and since you’re using two nice!nanos, does that mean you don’t need to connect the two sides via TRRS? I’m interested in doing this with my build, and this seems very interesting, although skimming through some other comments it seems like it doesn’t run on QMK? It seems I’ll need to do a lot of research!
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Yeah, the picture you see is the keyboard working and connected to my computer. No wires needed.
The batteries are underneath the nice!nano in the space provided by the MillMax sockets. Fits in nice and snug :)
Yes, heeaaps of research involved. No official QMK. Apparently there are ports, but from what I can tell it’s janky. I’m a developer and it wasn’t exactly easy for me. I chose BlueMicro firmware and the documentation is S P A R S E but I got there in the end. There’s also ZMK which looks promising but I haven’t got around to playing with it yet.
Edit: here is the battery.
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I have done a very similar first build, but with just some promicros
Oh I just checked it out in your post history. Very nice! I like the oleds - I may get them for my board eventually...
Do the nice nanos handle a lot differently? Where are the batteries? Also: the oleds are very nice. I currently have an wpm counter and a bongocat animation on them
I’ve never built another keyboard so I wouldn’t know if it’s different. The firmware support is a bit lacklustre and firmware documentation is ...sparse. But the nice!nano itself is great. It’s currently running BlueMicro firmware, but I’m hoping that ZMK will continue to be worked upon and I’ll switch to that eventually. The biggest issue with BlueMicro is that it’s ONLY Bluetooth - no USB support so you’re limited to devices with Bluetooth.
I think I would only get them if qmk supports them and that will take a while
Did you go straight to the nice!nano or did you look at others such as the bluemicro840?
Oh man, I just got this kit. I didn’t know it was Bluetooth only. That makes me regret the purchase.
Both of yours look very nice. Mine is not ready for debut. What firmware are each of you running?
Hopefully it will be soon!
I’m running BlueMicro currently, but I think I’ll play with ZMK when I get the time.
Edit: are you building a lily58?
Yes, its built and working with hotswap converted through hole lily58 x qtkb glow board,Elite C v4, oled, backlit keys.
I am having issues with qmk firmware, getting development environment set up. So I can change key map and try to fix the led matrix, left(primary) matrix works fine but the right(secondary) is stuck on red.
Additionally I want to convert to bluetooth while keeping the backlit/oleds, laser cut the legend on the keys, print a case.