After the initial information gathering, I decided to pursue this project but there was still a problem: hardware availability.

Apart from some sporadic pics on Twitter, there’s not much around. Furthermore, the majority of those that posted pictures are based in Japan, therefore making it pretty hard to try to source the board from them.

With no real way for me to get my hands on a board, I decided to send a message to the guy that posted the Reddit ad asking if he was willing to share with me pics and measurements of the PCB. He kindly accepted and we started sharing information.

Taking the pics of the PCB that I saw previously on Twitter I asked for verification about the EC pad spacing and dimensions, which turned out to be pretty in line with the one I had previously used for another project. Meanwhile, he pointed me to another user from the discord server “Conical Keyboards”, saylae, who was more than happy to help me out with a couple of links to the original firmware and some advice about compilation. Not only that but he also involved Rooski15, another user from the same server, who did a keymap file for quick testing and put together a very concise and clear recap about the debug functions available in the original firmware.

After that, I felt more confident about my chances of succeeding in this endeavor, both because of the information I’ve managed to collect and the interest shown in my project by those that I’ve messaged and talked with.

Let’s now start talking about some more technical things: Principles and design