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Making keyboard cables

I just shared on fedi the keyboard cables I made. I am really proud of how they came out so I thought I'd share here the process and justification for why I went the route I did.

Background

I own two mechanical keyboards:

The WASD is an older keyboard I've had for years that is Micro-USB. And the Tofu60 I built this year and is USB-C.

I struggled a bit after switching to the Tofu because, being 60%, it lacks a lot of keys I use in certain programs. Primarily in my DAW and gaming. I purchased this keyboard because 9/10 times I am at my computer I am webbrowsing and typing. And for typing this keyboard is fantastic. It's basically purpose built for Emacs where I do most of my typing these days.

But I have emacs keybindings in Firefox too so it makes typing there also pretty easy :)

So the issue then was that if I wanted to switch between my 100% and 60% keyboard I needed to switch cables too. This is doable. The cheapest solution is to just buy two cables, zip tie them together and have a pigtail coming out the back of the desk and just changing which is plugged into a device. But that's ugly, and I didn't actually have a 6ft USB-C cable on hand. The one the came with Tofu was 3ft. So until I built the cable I was actually running the cable off the side of my desk directly into the PC instead of routed down the back.

So I researched a bit and came across ZAP cables. ZAP cables is a custom cable company that seems to specialize in DIY cables, primarily USB variants and audio cables. These cables are extra fancy because they come with paracord that you sleeve your standard cable into to make it extra cool! But what really attracted me to this is I could buy all the pieces I needed in one place for what feels like fairly decent price. I'm sure there is a markup vs some electronics supplier. But I'd rather know what I am getting is proper the first time around. And what made this whole thing work is that you can also purchase a detachable cable connector to the whole thing.

Photos

[img] The Device side cables

[img] Close-up of the GX16 connectors

[img] Tofu60 2.0 HHKB with cable

[img] WASD 100% 104-key with cable

Total Cost

So I created a cart with exactly what I needed without the spare lengths/parts to ensure I had enough for big mistakes and it came to $19.49:

The DIY kit I ordered had:

Which is a base of $3.80 with the additional prices to total the $15.65 but if you built roughly the same kit yourself it comes out to about a dollar less (buying 6 heat shrinks (2 more than you'd need)).

So yeah for about $20 you get 3 cables and the ability to hot swap your keyboards.

Building the cables

Building the cables was very easy. I came at this with previous experience doing all but heat shrink. You really only need a lighter or heatgun, heavy duty scissors, a cable stripper (or some precision with a blade), and soldering iron + solder.

I cut the 7ft of cable into a 6' and 1' piece. I then sleeved the cable and cut the sleeving to size. You can make it a bit shorter as you need about 1" exposed to strip and connect to each connector. Realistically a bit less but better trim it to size than have to cut even more! To attach the paracord you just finger-trap style slink the sleeve to feed the cable through it. Its slow going so take your time.

After that I stripped the end of the cables cut off the foil and stripped the 4 small wires. I then started with the GX16 connector. I decided to use the pinned side for the keyboards and the socket end for the PC. Since its easier to clean the pins (they're just metal) where cleaning the socket from dust and such is a lot harder and the PC side should really never be disconnected from a device for too long.

But before we can solder the connector we need to add some heat shrink to the cable to thicken up the cable to help the connector's clip brace to the cable (and protect it from chewing through the paracord). So I applied the heat shrink leaving enough space to work. If you make a mistake its pretty easy to go in with a hobby knife and slice it away enough to loosen it and slide it off.

To build the connector you really just need to make your wiring consistent between the two. Some guides recommend an order but I don't think any of the pins themselves are grounded to the outer casing or meant to be specifically ground. But what matters is you are consistent from that point forward. The pins are labeled 1 - 5 where the 5th is meant to be grounded to the wires drain. So pick a pattern, take a picture, and write it somewhere safe. The guide I followed recommenced "Black and white christmas" or "black, white, green, red". Which hey. I remembered! But it caused some wires to have to pass over which made it a bit tricky. I would see what your cables do and pick what works. So 1 is black etc.

I made sure before I soldered everything to slide the parts over the cable that need to come back up into the cable. This is a rookie mistake that I've made before. Always check that any piece not attached to the cable doesn't need to be before soldering anything!

I tinned the wires first and the connector joints. Then I just soldered them together. Its trick and I had to use a helping hand. But it was pretty straightforward.

The USB is the same thing. It should come labeled with what wires for what. this is much easier to solder because its not a circle. After I connected everything and pinched the outer case on. I put heat shrink over it and applied it - leaving enough space to plug in.

I repeated this for the other two cables. If you have any experience soldering this is a cake walk. If this is your first soldering job its tricky but still beginner. But I'd recommend buying an extra foot of cable so if/when you screw up you don't end up shorter than you need. And to start with the longest cable. This way you can trim it down each time you screw up. Just chop off the ruined end and start over. I accidentally snapped a wire when stripping and had to go back another inch.

It is also good to have a multi-meter to just do some connectivity testing to make sure everything's wired up properly.

Some videos and the real fancy folk do coils. I didn't bother!

Alternatives

So while researching I came across a pretty neat alternative which is to just use molex. I even have a bunch of unused molex laying around. I could've easily just frankenstein a spare shorter USB-C cable, and one of my long USB-A to Micro-USB cables to make the cabling. And use the molex to act as the connector. Since what I need is really 4 wires to bridge together. This would require a bit of actual planning and verification but I think realistically this is a cheap proper DIY alternative.

I don't know enough about USB to know if I could just swap the port on the back to USB-C and if that would work with some clever re-routing. Another option could've been to use a USB adapter to convert whichever cable into the other (so like USB-C to micro).

And of course just zipting two cables together and running them up my desk and just changing which plugs into which keyboard. Realistically I have way too many USB slots to begin with and likely hood I had the cables laying around. If not a 6ft USB-C 2.0 is max $10 with shipping and tax.

Conclusion

I like making custom cables. I do solderless custom cables for my patchbay and pedalboard. I've done other soldering projects before and the only thing that made me nervous was the heatshrink. I screwed up a few times but using a Zippo or a stem lighter would be perfect to shrink the heatshrink. I liked my zippo because it stood up by itself and I can use two hands to rotate the cable.

But yeah I would genuinely recommend this for any cable solution where you need to swap and often DIYing a solution can be great

Links

[https] Zap Cables Site

[https] kbdfans - Tofu60 2.0

[https] WASD V3 104-key Mechanical Keyboard (I have the v2)

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