3/21/2026 10:08 PM - Made the schematic

Place all the symbols according to the average 80% ANSI keyboard layout. Wired all the rows and columns, and connected everything to the Raspberry Pi Pico

3/21/2026 10:19 PM - Assigned the footprints

Assigned all the footprints for the Raspberry Pi Pico, the 81 Cherry MX Switches, and 81 1N4148 diodes. Changed the other footprints to 2.00u, 6.25u and others.

3/21/2026 10:24 PM - Place components on the PCB

After completing and saving the schematic, I started on the PCB. First, I place all the keys according to the layout and accurately down to 3 decimal MMs. This was a very tedious yet important thing to ensure the rows of keys are equally placed. Then, I placed all the diodes. Again, this was a very tedious task that required precision.

3/21/2026 10:26 PM - Routing Keys

After all the keys and diodes were placed, it was time to draw some routes(180+ tbh). I started with the small ones, which were routing the keys to each of their respective diodes.

Final look:

3/21/2026 10:31 PM - Routing Everything

In this session, I routed the rest of the components remaining. The keys gave me a lot of problems since they were all headed towards the Pico, and I had to change layers several times for it. I tried to make it as clean as possible :)

I also added 7 holes for mounting the PCB to the case

3/22/2026 1 PM - Case Designing Time!

In this session, I designed the case. Since I had added 7 mounting holes in the PCB, I made 7 towers for the screws and their diameters were 3.4mm, which is 0.2mm more than the mounting holes. I did fillet for 5mm, height of the base as 2.4mm

3/22/2026 8 PM - Firmware time!!!!

I used my schematics and my keyboard layout, and used QMK for firmware. I think Python (kmk) is not the best choice for the firmware of a keyboard, so I used QMK C, which is very good in terms of firmware for a keyboard.

4/13/2026 - Placing and soldering diodes

After getting all the components, I started by placing the diodes in place. In this, I had to bend each side of the diode to sit exactly in the centre of the logo, else it would have gone left or right while soldering.
I soldered the diodes also, but did not click pics coz I forgot

You can see my other keyboard in the background

4/14/2026 1 PM - Placed Stabs and soldered keys with ras pi pico

After placing and soldering all of the 1N4148 diodes, I now had to solder my Cherry MX keys to the PCB. This was done in 2-3 days in different sessions, so you can see the progress

4/14/2026 2 PM - Firmware timee!!!

After being done with the soldering and things, I now had to upload the code to the Pico. I made many versions of the code coz the keys acted weird, rows and columns were wrongly arranged, and there were many bugs with the code.