9. Embedded programming

Magnus

Research

I decided to design a small keyswitch keychain PCB for connecting to my other projects. I want to have a hotswappable Cherry MX Style switch footprint that I can slot into a socket on another board to add a button. It also doubles as a clicky fidget. Using KiCad 9’s Plugin and Content Manager I installed the Keyswitch KiCad Library and started designing a simple board.

The PCB

Here’s the board I designed, It’s double sided with an irregular outline and a keychain hole.

Here’s a view of each side separately:

And here’s a 3D view:

Ordering

After reading through the Instructions for Ordering I used the the Fabrication Toolkit Pluginfor KiCad to generate a zip file with all the gerber files JLC PCB wants.

I upload the zip file generated using the plugin to JLCPCB and I’m presented with a preview and tons of options:

JLCPCB does a great job explaining all of these when you hover over the question mark to the left of the checkboxes. Plenty of options for different kinds of boards. It also automatically detects the number of layers and offers an assembly service if the BOM is properly generated.

The defaults were pretty good but I switched the surface finish from the standard “HASL(with lead)” to “ENIG” since I love the gold-plated surface. The finish on the panels.

Fantastic explanations with images. I didn’t end up ordering it due to insane shipping costs (50$ for 5 Pieces) But it’s surprisingly easy to do.