Zinc Keyboard BLE

Posted on May 22, 2019

Wireless Split Keyboard

I got interested in split mechanical keyboard in mid-2018. At that moment, I was using lofree, a Bluetooth clicky keyboard, and trying to get a wireless split keyboard.

And I found this.

So, I gave up getting a wireless split keyboard and got a wired split keyboard, Barocco MD 600, instead.

Zinc x BLE Micro Pro

After that, I have built a couple of keyboards, and made one of them wireless. So, this time, I make my split keyboard wireless.

Here’s the picture of the wireless split keyboard that I built. It is a Zinc Keyboard with BLE Micro Pro.

I built this referencing the following articles.

Building the wireless Zinc keyboard was almost the same as what I did for Wireless Atreus using the BLE Micro Pro. In this time, there are two types of firmware: one is for master, and another is for slave keyboard. There is already firmware for wireless split keyboards, such as Helix and Lets Split, so I made one for Zinc.

The issue I always encounter when using the BLE Micro Pro is where I should put batteries for Bluetooth. And this time, I made a custom keyboard part to accommodate two AAA batteries. With this part, the keyboard looks neat as it was without the batteries.

That’s it. Thanks to the BLE Micro Pro, it was pretty easy to make my keyboard wireless.