Who doesn’t want a little added functionality to their lives? Feeling a few shortcut keys would make working in Eagle a bit smoother, [dekuNukem] built his own programmable mechanical keypad: kbord.

It sports vibrant RGB LED backlight effects with different animations, 15 keys that execute scripts — anything from ctrl+c to backdoors — or simple keystrokes, up to 32 profiles, and a small OLED screen to keep track of which key does what!

kbord is using a STM32F072C8T6 microcontroller for its cost, speed, pins, and peripherals, Gateron RGB mechanical keys — but any clear key and keycaps with an opening for the kbord’s LEDs will do — on a light-diffusing switch plate, and SK6812 LEDs for a slick aesthetic.

Check out the timelapse video tour of his build process after the break! (Slightly NSFW, adolescent humor for a few seconds of the otherwise very cool video. Such is life.)

[dekuNukem] had to apply a bit of cleverness to get the SK6812 LEDs to play nice with the STM32; he ended up using Serial Peripheral Interface Bus and tinkering with the timing to mimic the SK6812 ‘s needed 800KHz data rate. The final effect is well worth it.

Custom keyboards are always a great project, be they small, old-fashioned, hacked apart and repurposed, or much more.