Introducing the Shoveler keyboard!
I’ll be honest, this project has taken far longer than I initially expected. From using a lesser known MCU, a completely undocumented rotary encoder, the hardest PCB routing maze I’ve ever experienced and stumbling through QMK’s quantum painter, this design has been a challenge to say the least.
The Shoveler is a planck-case compatible PCB with the two center columns removed to house a modular peripheral section.
Inspired by the aesthetics of the Lumberjack and Lesovoz, the Shoveler stores all of its through-hole components in the center of the keyboard.
The component section showcases 41 diodes surrounding the Pimoroni PGA2040 MCU. This is an RP2040 breakout board that crucially doesn’t contain the USB-C connector allowing me to place it elsewhere and support existing Planck keyboard cases.
Within the center section, are a set of 4-pin, 5-pin and 8-pin headers:
The 4-pin header can be used to connect standard OLED displays as well as the Cirque trackpad using the i2c adapter board.
The 5-pin header is compatible with 5-pin Pimoroni breakout garden boards such as the commonly used Haptic or Trackball breakouts.
The 8-pin header supports the pinout used by some SPI LCD displays such as this 1.69 inch ST7789 module.
The idea for supporting these options is to make the board as extensible as possible. I have plans to make a PMW3360 trackball breakout using the same 8-pin format.
The bottom row of the keyboard features a wide variant of the Panasonic roller encoder that I’ve never seen used before in a keyboard.
There is almost no documentation about this part online, to the extent that I had to make the PCB footprint for it myself by measuring the part by hand. I’m planning on doing a dedicated writeup to collate all of the information I have on this one component.
Due to the obscurity of this part, I have also made the bottom row compatible with a 2u spacebar like that of a standard MIT layout Planck.
For you low profile lovers out there, along with MX switches the Shoveler supports hotswappable Choc V1 switches with MX spacing.
I’d love to hear your feeback about this design! Feel free to leave a comment here on Substack or on the accompanying r/EMK Reddit thread with your thoughts.
As always if you’d like to stay updated with future projects (the next one hopefully won’t take as long), a subscription would be greatly appreciated!