QASS
Story
It all began with the GB of BigAssEnters and 10u spacebars at Sneakbox. Saw it and thought it would be funny to make a very small keyboard with a very big enter key. So this KLE was born:
Then I got to work and and designed a PCB and case. The line in the middle is the plate and can also be made from metal just by lasercutting. The rest of the case is designed for FDM printing.
But then kilipan posted this image.
I thought this would be a perfect fit and idea for the 10u spacebar.
But how to make this technically possible? The switch(es) for the spacebar/bottom row need to be lower than the main PCB. Lets do a break-off-PCB for that and use the main PCB as a plate in this area. Thanks to kilipan again for the inspiration he got from the picture below. Unintended team-work.
This was the starting point of that idea.
At first I wanted to connect the PCBs with a cable.
But that was more complicated than neccessary. So I setteled on normal pin headers. Here in the "before" state.
The PCB was intended to be comptaible with the Miao and the Xiao MCU. But the Xiao has too little pins on the side, so I wanted to use the two extra pins on the underside of the MCU. For this I added pogopins (I ordered slightly too short pogopins, but it worked great with a little solder spacer on the pads).
Later it turned out that these pins can not be used as GPIO, just for a specific serial protocol. So the Xiao support was dead on arrival. But this cute logo came of it (generated with AI):
Was meant to symbolise a cat (miao) and xiao (good bye in Italian). Now it probably means: goodbye to the xiao-compatiblity.
The name QASS is a play on words between QAZ and ASS, because of the Big Ass Enter it uses. This is also root of the peach logo on the bottom, didnt want to get too graphical and keep it SFW.
Facts
| Topic | Explanation | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Case | not published | |
| PCB | OpenSource | QASS PCB |
| Mounting | Sandwich mount I guess? | |
| Special Feature | BAE, 10u spacebar, lowered spacebar, metal plate, Miao MCU with FAK | |
| GB | May 2024, ended |
Final Pictures
