12/29/2025 - Create the shematic diagram

Weeeell so turns out the girlfriend wated something as a reward for doing the art for the pepuino nano, and since shes a music producer, what better thing to do than a made from scratch launchpad for her songs idk, so i started by laying down the components, and perchance the most difficult part choosing the correct microncontroller to power up this proyect, after some carfeull consideration, i decided to go with the raspberry pico, since it has the pin requirement y need for this, (its a 9 x 9 grid with per light rgb) so i did the schematic diagram for this

12/30/2025 12 AM - routed the pcb

after what felt like an eternity, i placed all the compnents in the pcb, in a simple matrix layout, aligning all the components was fairly easy, a bit tedious, but easy, then, it was time for the most complex part, routing it all, after already doing the split keybaord and the dev board, routing this felt way easier than it did before, and this time i planned beforehand how i wanted everything to look, so the main idea was, have all verical pads on one side and all horizontal components in the other side, so i stick up with it, and after 6 ish hours the routing was done, im so happy with the end result, it's so neat, almost like a machine did it (i did it myself) but once i thought the pain was over, i ran the dcr just to find 200+ erros, (it was all clearance errors) so after some asking in the slack, they saw the pcb and said "just remove the clearance from 0.5mm to 0.2mm" so i did, and BAM like magic no more dcr errossss!!!

finished pcb

clearance error

12/30/2025 1 PM - re-route the pcb

so u guys remeber i finished routing the pcb yesterday, well, turn out i forgot and i had one critical mistake, the led i placed them on the outside of the switch, which means that the baseplace, when i was ognna desing in fusion it was not gonna fit, because the light is not in proper position, so i went ahead, delete the whole thing and start from scratch again, this time i went so much smoother since i already had all the bases down and in my opinion it even look pretier nowwww!

12/30/2025 3 PM - re-re-route the pcb

Sou turns out even though i figures out the led, i totally forgot that the diodes go in the back of the pcb, and with some research, my worst nightmare was confirmed, the led have to also go back with the didoes, so after a lot of time, the new pcb is finally routed

12/30/2025 6 PM - desing the case in fusion 360

after the pain of routing, designing the plate and the case in fusion was a breaze, after a bit of fighting with the program, and some crashes the pcb + render are ready!

1/19/2026 - Image of the case

well, since i got told that my proyect needs more scews when i already have scews, i just wanted to make a little post of the case, so theres no confusion with it

the idea for the assembly, is to make it like a mechanical keyboard, have a plate, with scews, that will be attach with standoffs like a sandwictch (bottom of the case, pcb, switchplate)

2/11/2026 - add acylic coer, and update the case

i updated the case, i created the acrylic cover that is gonna be on top of the microcontroler, im gonna be laser cutting this in my school using 2mm think acrylic, and then i updated the place, so it fits a bit more the case

2/22/2026 9 PM - switch to the pepuino nano V1

well since they told me this is a simple project, i guess it would be usefull to use the devboard i designed, so after messing abit with the schematic diagram, and updating the routing the new board was ready to go

2/22/2026 10 PM - add the rotary encoder

sooo continuing with updating the proyect and making it better, i added a rotary encoder, it founded tricky where to place it because i needed to remove 1 led and since they are all conected i founded that the first led the one that is connected to the pins was easy to remove, so i did, i removed the led and the swithch in that position, and after that it was just matter of time until i succesfully routed all the conections in place!