Custom Keyboard Build - Rye Bread Board

At the end of last year I changed jobs. I was jumping into a more corporate environment, so my old clacky mechanical keyboard wasn't going to cut it.

I started looking into my own build. Nothing fancy, just a 60% board with silent switches. I finished the build, but fell down a rabbit hole of split keyboards. Which sent me down another rabbit hole of building a board from the ground up. And when I say ground up, I mean starting from a custom PCB.

I what I ended with was the Rye Bread Board, named after my late pup Riley (AKA Rye-bread). I share more details below, but the design highlight for me was the integration of his paw print into the board.

I did a lot of research which I won't go into in this post. Other sites have done it better. The two which helped me out the most were:

https://flatfootfox.com/ergogen-introduction/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_VuXVErD6E

Without going into build details, I wanted to go more into the inspiration for the different aspects of the board.

Form Factor

The general form factor was based off of the Ferris Sweep. One aspect of the sweep that I wasn't a fan of was the placement of the two thumb keys for each hand. I felt like they were shifted too far inwards, which would be a harder stretch for the thumb.

Additionally, when trying to lay out my hand, I noticed my pinkie finger didn't extend as far. I felt like shifting that column further down would be a more comfortable feel. Although now that I am actually using it, I believe that layout would be fine as well.

Switches and Keycaps

This aspect of the board I will admit I paid more attention to cost over what I envisioned as the ideal. I had extra switches from my last build, as well as keycaps that I liked.

If I were to do it all again, I would probably opt for the Choc lower profile switches. But these still work well. I was afraid that the switches would be too high and cause wobble with aggressive typing, but I haven't had any issues so far.

PCB Design

I mentioned previously that the shape of the PCB was inspired by the Ferris Sweep with some alterations.

Wiring

The one thing I did change was the wiring of the witches to the pins. I should have mapped them to the same pins the Ferris Sweep did. This would allow me to use the Ferris Sweep keyboard configuration in the QMK configurator when flashing the keyboards microcontrollers.

Since they are different, I essentially had to figure out which pins are switched, and map them accordingly with the Sweeps configuration settings. This wasn't ideal, and I will be setting up my own configuration for this board in the future. But as a workaround it is okay for now.

Artwork

As I mentioned above, the name of the board was inspired by my pup Riley who passed just before staring this build. As part of the PCB, I added an image layer of his paw print that the vet gave to me on his final day. Additionally, I added the name "RYE-BREAD-BOARD" at the bottom.

References and Notes

Overall I thought this was a fun build. If I were to do it again, there would be some changes. But overall I am happy with it.

As a daily driver I am still getting used to it. It won't replace my keyboard that I use for development just yet, but it's getting there.

Special thanks to wazpys for helping with the wiring of this build. My skills are no where near his, so without him I would have a couple PCBs sitting on my shelf collecting dust. Here is where you can find him:

website

reddit

If there is any interest in the build, I would be willing to share my design files on GitHub, so feel free to reach out.