Shrinking the keyboard controls

[dawnmist]

I spent most of the weekend (when I wasn't blinded by a migraine) laying out a (potential) circuit board for my home-made keyboard. At the moment, it's still wired up via breadboard taking up a ton of space on my desk - I'd like to finally get it inside the keyboard box. :-)

First attempt was a daughter board for the shift-register part to connect to the existing keys...but wasn't going to fit the teensy & 40-pin screen connector in the space at the end as well, which would still leave some of the keyboard parts sitting outside the box.

Second attempt was a complete replacement of the existing key mount for the 24-key section of the keyboard, integrating them onto a single circuit board so that the teensy & screen could go on the other side of the keys, and the keys could be directly wired to their shift registers instead of needing connectors for them - that looks a *lot* better in terms of wiring, and has all laid out nicely so far. I've still got a few adjustments to make - the joystick needs wiring in, and there's a couple of resistors we need to add as short-circuit protections for the footswitch & spare button connectors, but it's looking like it'll work nicely.

I discovered that circuit board layout is a really interesting and fun puzzle to do...and one that will actually be useful at the end, which traditional jigsaws generally are not! *lol*