August, 2025 #dactylmanuform #keyboard #raspberrypi #pipico #3dprinting This past summer, the small 4x5 dactyl manuform keyboard that my husband built me shorted out and I was very sad. So I built a new keyboard! I actually had 2 sets of split-keyboard shells that I had printed and been intending to populate with switches and wiring, but I hadn't really gotten around to it this year yet. So when my current keyboard broke (and I was in the middle of playing Clair Obscur...it was a travesty), fate pushed me to build my next one. I primed and painted the shell of the keyboard to be a simple rainbow design. I wanted to make this keyboard look like candy. ![[dactyl manuform switches.jpg]] I kept it pretty simple with Cherry MX blue switches, since I like the clicky. Once the switches were installed, I glued in the small custom PCBs that we had made to make keyboard wiring easier (and also hot swappable)! ![[dactyl manuform pcbs.jpg]] After that was wiring the rows, columns, and thumb clusters. ![[dactyl manuform rows and columns.jpg]] I forgot to get a photo of the microcontrollers all soldered up, but I used two Pi Picos for this build. I configured this firmware to get the keyboard working: github.com/GustawXYZ/dactyl_manuform_pi_pico/tree/main And after adjusting some of the wiring that wasn't seated correctly, I had my new hot swappable dactyl manuform keyboard :) ![[dactyl manuform finished.jpg]] The next keyboard I have that I want to finish building is a Baldur's Gate 3 themed keyboard with hot swap switches, underglow LEDs, and custom keycaps. We'll see when I start working on that one, lol. In the meantime, this is my cute little starburst keyboard!