I continued my collection of my Unibrow keyboard, this time with Kailh Choc low profile
switches. This is meant for travelling with my laptop so I wanted to make it small.
Obviously the low profile switches help. But, in addition, I removed the wrist rest part
of it. The specs of the keyboard are...
I use through-hole diodes and not SMD diodes on my boards. Since the switches are low profile,
there's not enough room between the back plate and PCB for the diode. So instead of the
normal square hole for the switch mountings, I have the columns as one large cutout. The
switches snap in on the sides so it's not required to have the top/bottom supported.
I now make the bottom of my case out of 2 layers of 1.5mm that I glue together. The bottom
most piece has larger cutouts are big enough for the head of the screw so that the screws
are counter-sunk. This means I can use very thin feet.
The USB C connector from the KeyPlus+ controller fits nicely in the cutout.
Here is the low profile board next to my normal sized Unibrow. The cases are actually the
same height. But the LP one has an extra 3mm layer on top of the backplate. I've thought
about doing this on my normal sized keyboard as well. But it was needed on the LP as I had
to leave some holes in the backplate to make room for the controller and the diode thing.
And of course the keycaps are lower as well.
Here's the whole family of Unibrow keyboards including my original prototype where I was
testing the layout.