Krteq

Krteq is a new, improved version of my first keyboard Krtkus, learning from its lessons to make a design that's easier to build, more maintainable and better encapsulated.

Just like Krtkus, the board is completely open source. The PCB, case and firmware are available on the project's GitHub page.

Krteq upgrades Krtkus' Pro Micro to a Raspberry Pi Pico, in order to get enough GPIOs for the new backlight and indicator LEDs.

And for switches, I went with KS-33Bs instead of traditional KS-33s to make manufacturing of the hotswap low profile PCB a little easier, as we can use standard MX hotswap sockets (even cheap off-brand versions) instead of the special Gateron low profile ones.

Finding good keycaps remains the biggest challenge, I went with Tai-Hao Thins and my favorite Keychron LSA ABS. Still I wish there was a lot more color options for low profile keycaps.

Tai Hao do their best, but then forget to offer a 2u keycap for their color sets, making them unusable for my build. And finding nice matching color combinations for only black and white keycap sets is pretty difficult.

One of the biggest upgrades over Krtkus is a much nicer USB port orientation and position, and USB-C as opposed to Micro-B.

The MCU is finally hidden inside, protected from dust and connected to the outside by a sturdy panel mount cable, which further protects the Pico's onboard USB port from snapping.

Now featuring a spacebar stabilizer! Unbelievable.

On launch, Krteq only features a simple white backlight, because I wanted to play it safe, and go with a simple solution that I can't mess up. But now that it works, I'd love to implement proper RGB with all effects for the next revision.