Keyboard Builders' Digest / Community
DIY XIAO Mechanical Keyboard Contest
Seeed Fusion launched a new keyboard contest with free prototyping and nice prizes. Check out the details.
Published July 17, 2022
Hackaday's odd inputs contest has just ended and here is a new competition already: Seeed Studio launched the DIY XIAO Mechanical Keyboard Contest.
As far as I can see, you can't lose by participating: they offer free prototyping for the contestants, and there's a prize pool of $1000.
Visiting the site, only slightly embarrassingly, my words welcome you. :D That's because I was asked for my thoughts on DIY keyboards and I also gave the nice people at Seeed some tips with regards of the time frame of the contest and also to make the Seeed Bazaar listing optional.
The rules are quite self-explanatory and clearly explained on the event page.
You have to use one of the five Seeed XIAO controllers: Seeeduino XIAO, Seeed XIAO RP2040, Seeed XIAO BLE, Seeed XIAO BLE Sense or Seeed XIAO ESP32C3.
Only 11 GPIO pins, but since publishing the Japanese duplex, square/round-robin and improved square matrix write-ups, you hopefully know that that's more than enough even for relatively large form factors.
I've featured several projects using these controllers, so you can learn their secrets by checking out the docs or repos of the Slice36, Hummingbird, Mammoth or Zaphod Lite.
You can apply by filling in this form, and feel free to put "KBD.NEWS" into the last input box! ;)
In exchange, Seeed asks you to review their service and to allow them to share your project on their social media platforms. The design does not need to be open-sourced and production files will not be shared with the public – unless you want to.
In addition, I'll try to keep an eye on this competition and feature some promising projects.
Published on Sun 17th Jul 2022. Featured in KBD #87 (source).
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