~sungo/ish

#ish

The ish, yet another Corne-ish keyboard

#What

The ish is a Corne-ish split 42-key keyboard, specifically designed for the nice!nano, bluetooth/battery operation, and ZMK.

The ish has the following features/anti-features:

Choc v1 key switches only
Keys are Cherry MX spaced (I have fat fingers)
Designed for battery and bluetooth, via the nice!nano controller
Does not have LEDs, underglow or otherwise, nor OLED displays
Relatively easy to build
Based on the Corne v3
Supports ZMK exclusively

#Why

Well, gotta learn kicad somehow and the Corne is one of my favorite boards. Like all keyboard people though, I have capital-T Thoughts about the Corne so why not learn kicad by tweaking the Corne.

Also to be clear, this is built with me, sungo, in mind. I will be super thrilled if other folks like it but this board is to make me happy and serve as a learning experience.

#Just give me the gerbers, dammit

The gerbers for the v1 are available here. Top and bottom plates are available as well though regular Corne plates work just fine if you have those already.

#Goals

a choc build based on the Corne v3 platform. The v3 simplified the board a great deal, particularly by making it not reversible.
Wireless first. Built specifically for the nice!nano, the ish comes with battery wiring and a power switch
Fuck LEDs. I don't use LEDs or OLEDs on my battery builds so they're gone
All going well, don't change anything that would break compatibility with the Corne v3 plates

#Design Principles

AKA arbitrary rules I made up for myself

Fuck branding. If you've ever read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, I have a branding allergy similar to Cayce Pollard. I hate that most keyboards come slathered in URLs, cute logos, names, etc.
Limit the amount of traces on the top surface
Put no traces on the top surface under the MCU (It's way too easy to crap up a board by cutting traces while trying to get a stuck hotswap MCU off the board)
Limit soldering to one side
Keep solder points and electronics away from the edges
On an individual board, diodes all go the same direction

#Questions

#Why is the nice!nano face up?

Battery placement, plain and simple. If the nice!nano is chips-up, a 100mah battery fits perfectly under the MCU with a 4mm header easily obtained from Amazon. If the nice!nano is chips down, it does not.

#Why are the switches reversed on one half?

This is the result of a few of the design principles. The Corne v2 and the Corne v3 end up putting diodes and solder pads on the edge of the board on one half because there's no where else for them to go. On the other side, one direction conflicts with the standoff annular ring placement. So, if I want to keep the diodes and pads away from the board edge and I don't want to move the annular rings, one half of the board must have switches that go the other direction. If I toss my rule against breaking v3 plate compatibility, I'll revisit this.

#BOM

#Required parts that the board was designed around

These parts were specifically used in the design process. If you find other working options, please let me know.

Two nice!nano controllers soldered with machine pins
Two slide switches
Two lithpoly batteries with protection circuits - the protection circuits are really important as the ish has no onboard battery management of its own

#Other bits and bobs

Two momentary reset switches
42 diodes
Machine pin headers that, once installed, are at least 4mm tall to fit the battery
Choc v1 switches and caps

#License

The original Corne is licensed under the MIT license so the ish is as well.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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