I finally got my very first mechanical keyboard.

I was looking for something small and as portable as possible. So after checking out the r/MechanicalKeyboards subreddit for a little bit, I stumbled upon the Atreus Keyboard kit and decided to get one.

Now, please keep in mind that I've never soldered anything in my life prior to ordering this set. I had to learn and practice on the small Velleman kits they sell at Radioshack.

A big thank you goes out to thr3ddy for giving lots of tips on how to solder and sending me some neat Github stickers, and to Phil Hagelberg for putting this kit together in the first place. Also, thanks to my wife for helping me out here and there, that made a lot of things easier.

Below is a summary of my assembly process.

Sanding the wood.

Soundtrack of the whole thing.

All nice and clean.

Time to oil up!

This is my soldering setup. Yes, the monkey too.

Soldered the diodes.

Sticking the diode legs inside the microcontroller was kinda annoying.

Putting the microcontroller in and soldering it.

Preparing to solder the switches.

All switches ready, time to upload the firmware.

And there we go. Yes, I actually assembled it without putting in the USB cord, how silly.