💾 Archived View for wireheadmechanist.com › blog › 21week47.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 13:42:57. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I did system work today.
I got the extra diodes in and finished assembling the Helix. My most prominent obstacle was in flashing the Pro Micro controllers. Given that the controllers are mega32u4, that means you'll need to short pins 2 and three on the top left side in order to get into the bootloader mode. I learned this after several angry hours of frustration. Most of the keys work except for two that I now have to recheck once I solder the Micros to the board.
I have the Helix in and operating now. I am also having to relearn all of the typing that I just got used to. I'm also having to touch type from scratch with blank keys. It's getting to the point where I might not print the keys on after all.
I did a dumb today. Of course I did. I tried to solder the LEDs and OLED on and somehow shorted everything out. There was a lot of crying, bitching, and cussing to be heard, that's for sure.
It took a while, but by some odd miracle and a lot of tenacity I got it back working again. I won't be for trying to solder those kinds of LEDs anytime in the near future. I'm already getting addicted to the Helix, and the thought of not having it made me really antsy. And no, I still haven't put any letters on the keys yet. If this keeps up, I may not at all.
I got the Escape and Enter keycaps today. One thing I dislike about them is the lack of uniformity on the keycap sizes. I have XDA for the rest of the keyboard and these are OEM or something. I also don't have backlighting, so they don't light up yet like they should.
I'm not sure that I'm going to keep the keycaps.
Not too bad of a week for learning, and I have a keyboard that I really like.