I wonder how bad an idea it is to mount a raspi pico at a 90-degree angle to a PCB

I'm trying to design a keyboard that needs to fit into a small area (550mm by 15mm) and I realized I can technically get a little more room by making it have two right-angle PCBs. I could do that by designing two PCBs... or I could just have a pico mounted at 90 degrees!

@foone or mount the RP2040 right to the main board

@cinebox I'm not sure I'm gonna have room for that, amusingly enough.

@foone Why would it even be an issue? electrons don't care which direction they are facing.

@Fratm I mean sticking out of the board, like I only solder one side down and the other side is facing away from the board.
I know that'd work electrically, but mechanically it's a tad questionable

@foone

Itll be fine :)

Something not entirely unlike this.

@foone could you stick it on the back?

@cinebox Nope. Back is used to attach it to a surface, so it's gotta be flat.

@foone can you make it longer? like just for the funny image

@StellaFoxxie it's already half a meter long!

@StellaFoxxie I'm trying but so far I've just locked up kicad as it tries to handle even placing the footprints of my 2m keyboard

I just realized this PCB is actually bigger than my chosen PCB fab can make.

I mean, unless I have them make it diagonally, but I imagine that'd be a tad expensive

I locked up kicad for 5 minutes by accidentally trying to insert 8000 keys

@foone

Unicode / Emoji Keyboard? 🙂🤷‍♂️

@StellaFoxxie suggested I make it EVEN BIGGER and I got up to 254 keys and 1.9m meters before kicad started to completely shit itself

@simonzerafa NO

not only do I not want to do something Tom Scott already did, but keyboards don't do unicode.

@foone @StellaFoxxie "New Github Issue: Not possible to make proper keyboard PCBs with Kicad"

Here it is with an iso-standard height reference, a 5'12" foone

@foone

Sigh. I'll stop following you as you seem to have issues with actually having a conversation.

Be well and have a good life.

@foone JLC quoted me a surprisingly reasonable $30 for 5 off 500x15 flex? I don't know about your space constraints but maybe you could origami your micro off one end or side in that case? 500x40 (for a side-hinged one) lands closer to $40

I made a boringly sensible version of it.
18cm/7", 20 keys.

Labeled the keys

@sif I thought about that, but with how the wiring works that'd get really tricky. I'm just gonna downsize, which should be good enough for my needs

oh and the back

@foone up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top?

@foone curious why you don’t wire it so the microcontroller module faces up inside the profile of the face

@sif This is wrapping around an edge of a monitor, so it needs to be flat on that side

parts are ordered. who knows when I'll be able to solder it, but you gotta dream.

@foone oh god you didn't?

@foone oh wait, this isn't six foot, nevermind.

@dysfun @foone I don't even know how a fab would manufacture a 6ft PCB, let alone assemble it lmao

@dysfun @foone they don't even make FR4 laminate panels that big!

@dysfun yeah, no, I ordered the 7" one

@foone @dysfun I did once find a PCB manufacturer that would make flex PCBs of near arbitrary length as long as they were no more than about 60mm wide. wasn't cheap but if ever you want to make a 6ft noodle keyboard I can probably dig it back up.

@gsuberland @dysfun once I can consistently solder again and have money, that might be a great bad idea

@foone what's the difference between "under" and down? Shouldn't "down" be "behind?"

@StompyRobot you'll have to take it up with The Yardbirds

@foone OK, but hear me out... what about a 512*384 Foone?

@Extelec @foone is that a pico Cray or something else?

@falken @foone yes the Pico Cray https://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/other-2/pico-cray-small-scale-distributed-computing/

@buherator from memory it's about 2x faster, but the comparison is difficult.

@gsuberland @foone @dysfun If it's EU-based I would be interested. (For $DAYJOB)

@hennichodernich @foone @dysfun nah it was Chinese

@Extelec what's the basic BOM material cost on that before I wonder about a kit...

@falken I will send you a PCB FOC if you cover postage (I've never made it into a kit. ), other than that you only need a handful of usb connectors, there is a hub built into the base pcb, but I'd suggest using it only to power the pico's due to multiple USB issues on most common OS's.

9 Pi pico's(1's) a display ~£7, a hand full of buttons.

@falken If you are anywhere near Cambridge, I could bring one to the PIJam in the 1st March ?

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cambridge-raspberry-jam-1st-march-2025-raspberry-pis-13th-birthday-tickets-1243972107059

@DosFox @foone I've always wanted ILLEGAL LEGO :)

PCBs & parts arrived! Everything looks good. I'm gonna attempt to solder it together sometime this weekend

Arg I have no solder paste. This is going to be a pain to solder

I finished soldering it together. It's impossible to focus on with my camera (it's tiny and thin!) so here's a blurry photo

All keys work. I didn't fuck up any wiring!

@foone https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/114049938413744463

@foone Dell Inspiron ~2015?

@nightowl Latitude 7400

Keyboard installed and functional!
It's a macro keyboard for my external monitor.

It's capable of being wireless (but isn't currently) which'll help with cable management, and I need to write some software to make it easier to remap without needing to recompile it.

@foone I realize I'm very late to this, but ... 5' 12"? I'm bothered by this in ways I can't quite explain

@ericspittle isn't it great?