I made my custom keyboard wireless
I don’t have a particular need for a wireless keyboard. I’m usually planted at my desk, with my laptop plugged into a dock and a wired keyboard readily available.
But, I thought it would be cool to make a Bluetooth version of the egg58.
It turns out, making a keyboard you’ve already designed wireless is pretty straightforward these days. Using a nice!nano microcontroller and ZMK, you can turn basically any keyboard based around the Pro Micro wireless almost instantly.
The nice!nano is a microcontroller module pin-compatible with the ubiquitous Pro Micro, but based around the nRF52840. That means it comes with built-in wireless connectivity. (Obligatory disclaimer: not sponsored, I just think it’s really neat.)
ZMK, as you could guess, is a keyboard firmware, but unlike QMK has support for BLE (and nRF chips). Of course, it even works for split keyboards.
According to ZMK’s power profiler, I can expect the left (main) side of my keyboard to last almost two weeks on a charge, with just a tiny 110mAh battery that fits conveniently under the nice!nano. The right half lasts much longer, allegedly only needing a charge every 3 months
Even though I didn’t need to, I altered my PCB design a bit, just to remove the positions for components that were no longer required. Of course, RGB had to go, since it would kill the battery immediately.