Moth Keyboard

I've been using my moonlander for a few years at this point and honestly it's been great. I don't know how many times I've changed my layout, but it has been starting to settle. Part of that journey was moving to home row mods, numpad and symbol layers, and just generally reducing the number of keys actually being used. At this point I think I'm using less then half the keys available. Besides having more keys than I need, the only other thing I would change about the moonlander is it being wired. Don't get me wrong, wired does have it's benefits. But having the option of going wireless sounds really good. So once again it looks like I'm going down the path of building something custom.

Last time I built a custom keyboard, the wiring looked like an absolute rats nest. Even though you couldn't see if from the outside, I knew it was there, and it bothered me.

I had a quick look online, and couldn't find any 3d models I liked. I wanted it to be as close to "PCB at home" without having to actually design a PCB. My plan was to use the base to mount hotswap sockets and route the wiring. So I dusted off freecad and started modeling.

After a few attempts, I finally had the parts fitting neatly and an idea of how things would fit together.

Then after a bit more work, I was finally ready to start assembly.

Once the matrix was soldered, I temporarily wired it up to test that it was all working.