 Welcome to the show, it's me, John Park, and it's time for another exciting episode of JP's product pick of the week here, right here, right now, on Tuesday, as usual. Thank you, everyone, for stopping by. We've got people in our chats. If you are wondering where is the chat, maybe you're over on Facebook or Twitch, the chat. Head on over to Discord, theatafru.it slash discord. Jump into our server and find the live broadcast chat channel. It'll look like, not that, but wrong screen. Oh no, the software's being slow. There we go. That's our chat right there, and you can head on in. You can also head over to the YouTube chat. That one's active and people are usually checking that one out as well. So let's see, we've got a cool one here. This is actually, you can see, I called this one the director's cut. That's because we've seen this one before, but I thought this was a good one to do again, so it's not quite a new product, but it is a product pick. And that's because this one is not only a really cool one, a real favorite of mine, but I've done a few new projects with this product since the last time this was on the show, which is almost two years ago. So I hope you won't mind, but we're gonna have a nice deep discount on it. So if you want to, you can head on over to the product page. It is right there. Go to that URL or head on over to that QR code. You can get 50% off on the product pick. I'm gonna double check that, but I think that's right. And you don't need a coupon code. Just throw it in the cart. Buy it before the end of the show. Maximum of 10 per customer. I think we have maybe about a hundred of them to start with, so we shouldn't sell through, but we could, so if you wanna make sure you get some, get them early. But enough about that. Let's jump into the reintroduction as product pick from Lady Aida. The ortho snap apart, Neo-Key, five by six pad. I don't know, this has so many descriptors. This is neat because it's like the Neo-Key breakout that we've got that people really like. But people are like, well, what if I want to make a matrix of them? Like wouldn't it be cool if they were matrixed already for you? This is a pre-matrixed Neo-Key setup and it's basically designed for anybody who wants to make ortho linear or ortho basically gridded, right? It's an X, Y grid. It isn't like offset like most keyboards. You can use for macro pads. You can use it for keyboards. It's five by six. So it's a kind of like, not a full keyboard, but it's not so many that you're buying this huge thing you don't know what to do with. So it's 30 keys. It's kind of nice in between number. I'll range five by six and it's snap apart, but in between the snap apart bits, there's little like traces that I put between them so that it's all matrixed out, but you can snap it apart as you wish. So let's go to the overhead because this is kind of a complicated product, but if you've done keyboard stuff, I think it's kind of self-explanatory. So let me get out here and focus. Okay, so this is what it looks like and you can see through here the table, you can see like my hand. So there's a little snap apart things with holes. There's actually small holes you can't even see. So with a pair of pliers, you can snap this out from five by six to any grid you want. You can do two by four. You can do like one by six. You can do four by five, four by three, whatever you like. I recommend rectangular, but you don't have to do rectangular. It's just gonna be annoying to wire if it's not. And there's six columns and five rows. So you only have to connect to one of the five rows and one of the six columns because it's connected. Again, the rows and columns are connected through the little break apart tabs. So you can have a matrix keypad. You only need 11 GPIO pins for this. And then each NeoKey has a diode. You can kind of barely see it. So it's ghost free. You don't have to worry about ghosting because each one is diode protected. And then each one also has a through hole, sorry, a reverse mount NeoPixel. So this little NeoPixel is reverse mounted. So it shines out the top. And that's controlled by a single NeoPixel input line. And the NeoPixel input line snakes its way around through the entire grid and using a resistor to kind of do a feed through thing. If you snap it apart, like if I snapped this out, it would still work because it would just shunt down this way instead of going all the way around. Just trust me, it works. Only need one NeoPixel input and you can control any part of the rectangular grid that you design. If you want to have it be non-rectangular, like if you want like a triangle, you can do that. Just be aware that you're gonna have a lot of like weird like row he like the row and column math, they're gonna have to figure it out. And the NeoPixels, you might have to kind of do a couple jumper wires. So I recommend doing rectilinear. And then of course it's a rotatable. So, you know, in this case, because I have a North facing LED button. Sorry, it's like a go through button. You know, you'd want to be upside down. It doesn't matter because it's fully symmetric either way. The only thing that's directional is the NeoPixel input. You want it to be at the little arrows on the back. So you want it to be in the input of the arrows. You can see these little arrows that snake through. Just go into the input and you can make like your own custom macro pad or author keypad or split keyboard of whatever size and design you'd like. And just use any matrix keypad library code for this. We've got an Arduino library and of course circuit Python has support as well. I've been muted this whole time, haven't I? I'm so sorry, let's back up. It's okay. We don't have to pay for extra time. This is the internet. Let's see, I will start it all over again. Okay, are we with me now? Thanks for the warnings, Janice Koo and Todd. Appreciate it. Okay, so I presume that's right after Lady Aida finished up there. I went real quiet because I didn't click my mic button. All right, here we go. Catching up now. I'm gonna wait for the chat to catch up. Paul Cutler says he could lip read. Oh no. All right. So this is my product pick of the week this week. It is the NeoKey five by six ortho snap apart PCB. This is used for creating any kind of macro pad or keypad or even keyboard that you want in any kind of pattern you want. This has socketed key switch receptacle. So you can take your key switches. You don't need to solder them in. You just place them into their little sort of spring loaded clips there. And now it's ready to go. The contacts will be red. The matrix of column and row, depending on the software you're using, will now know that that's been pressed. Like Lady Aida said, there is, even though it's Halloween-ish now, there's no ghosting, no ghosts around with this because of the diode matrix that's really helpful. And you have 30 NeoPixels. It acts like a snaking 30 NeoPixel strip, but those can be lit up individually in any color you want when you press your keys there. So I have a project here I did a little while ago that is the NumPad 4000. And you can see one of the features here is that I wanted some non-gritted, non-one by one gridded switches because I have these two U switches here and a two U wide here. So you can see, looking at the back there, this is the snap apart. And I've snapped some stuff apart and rearranged some things so I could get this sort of unique layout here without having to do a custom PCB, which is really cool. One of the things you'll see, let me switch to the down-shooter here, is that I have used some wiring to reconnect any of those columns for data, the power for the NeoPixels, the power for, or rather the ground, as well as the data for the NeoPixels. So some rearrangements are done here to keep this flowing through, which is in a guide that I did, look for NumPad 4000. If you look at that, that'll basically show you all you need to know to rearrange these. So you can bolt two of them together if you want, make odd arrangements. You'll just require some more soldering depending on how fancy you wanna get with it. You can see at the top there, those are run as columns and rows still out to the microcontroller. In some cases, you can use a breakout. So I've got that TCA8418, which I used to do this number, or rather this ortho keyboard, which uses two of the five by sixes. Those are connected just using I squared C and then there's one microcontroller and just one of these. So no surgery was required on the boards. I just used two multiplexing readers to read those two matrix, diomatrix layouts, and then send the data over I squared C. Let me go back to the down shooter here. Here's a project that I put together just as a demo here. And you can see, this is the one that I use a lot of the time for prototyping with these. I soldered some headers onto here. Whoops, it's making sounds. I soldered some headers onto here so I could just plug jumper wire in to test things out. But this is the sort of stock configuration here. I've got some, I think it's the Gateron red or Kale red key switches on here. And then I have some alternating rows of clear and blue tinted see-through cables, which are really nice, or see-through key caps, I should say, which are really nice, because then you can see your NeoPixels. So here I'm using NeoPixels to designate whole steps and half steps on a little MIDI keyboard. And I'm also, let me reset this. You'll see here, when this restarts, we'll go through a little lighting show here. So I'm lighting them up in their little string pattern. Wait for that to hiccup, and there we go. Just test out some different colors, and then it lands in its default configuration. And here I'm using it with a QDPI RP2040 and a little stereo 3.5 millimeter output on a breadboard that's acting as my MIDI output to run into this little 10.10 nano box. And this is sort of a neat little keyboard. Can't play any wrong notes on it. Everything works in this, which is a theme. Since I don't play keyboard, I like to build these little MIDI controllers. But this is a fairly straightforward setup in code, except instead of just a normal GPO, I am using that little Stemacutee TCA8418. But that is collecting the column and row presses and then sending key press and key release messages to the microcontroller. And then I'm also sending it, let me turn the volume down, I'm sending it NeoPixel color changes. So when I press one of the green ones, it turns blue. When I press one of the, or it turns pink, when I press one of the pink ones, it turns green. So that is kind of helpful feedback that you can use, especially when you don't have printed key caps just to keep you oriented with what you're doing. If we look at code for this, let me jump into Adam view of the world here. Actually, let's go to this Adam view of the world right here. Adam's just my coding window here. You can see the layout and setup here is all about defining, jump to it. I have a little key map. So these are the keys that are pressed. Actually, this is interesting to look at. This, since I only have six columns, I read the first six, then the next six, then the next six. This happens to be a controller that can go up to 10 columns, which is why my numbering restarts in multiples of 10 there. And then it does that five times. So here I am setting up the key pads with the columns and rows. And that's, depending on your needs, if you bolted enough of these together to do, I think it's 10 by eight, you could make an 80 key keyboard out of these PCBs and use it with that TCA8418. And there's not much else to look at there in code. It's pretty typical key press code, midi code. Using, you can use key pad as well if you wanna use direct GPIO. It's a really convenient way to do it. If take a look at, move some windows around here. The learn guide for this, grab that window. This tells you all you need to know about putting together a really simple basic example. Here it's using a feather and there's just direct column and row wiring going on. And then we have example code in here both for Circuit Python using key pad as well as some NeoPixel information and in Arduino, same sort of thing there. If we look down at the related guides, you'll see we have this numpad 4000. That's the one that I showed right there. And that's the most in-depth guide we have as far as doing the type of surgery that you might wanna do to get an unusual layout. These snap apart really easily. You could also say, oh, I just want like five by four or something, just snap off a little bit. You won't have much surgery to do. And I think there's, yeah, there's maybe one other guide that shows this little keyboard that I did and then we have a guide coming for the ortho 60 key keyboard coming soon. I just submitted that to moderation so you should see that soon. Let's see, any questions in the chat, let me know. Someone asked, Mike PS, is that the same board and buttons used for the macro pad kit, essentially? Yes, these are the pretty much the same layout of socketed keys for Cherry MX compatible keys. The glow through reverse mounted NeoPixels there. And then the macro pad has a screen, a micro controller and the encoder on it as Paul Cutler pointed out. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, so macro pad, you can look at that for inspiration and then maybe build yourself a giant one using some of these. Let me look and see if there's anything else I wanted to mention or any other questions. The question from Yaniski mentions low profile keys. Yeah, so if you look at Kale Chalk, which are these really low profile keys, they have a different pinout and arrangement at the bottom so they won't fit. So you really wanna look for Cherry MX compatible. That is the particular layout for these and they are slightly taller, you'll find. There may be some lower profile versions of these, but the real low profile Chalk, Kale Chalk that we stock won't work with this. That would require a different layout and we haven't done any with that. Let's see, what else did I wanna mention on this? Anything? That's that, there's the URL. If you wanna go pick some up, I think we should still have some in stock hopefully. And I think that's gonna do it. So that right there is my product pick of the week this week. It is the NeoKey Snap Apart Ortho 5x6 PCB. And it's Chalk full of NeoPixels, diodes, and the connectors for your keyswitches, so perfect for any DIY keyboard and keypad types of projects. That is gonna do it for this episode. Remember, head on over to the site to get that for 50% off. You don't use a coupon code or anything, just throw it in your cart and get that purchased before the end of the show or within a few minutes and we'll be all set. Yeah, fielding another question, someone asked about the step switches that I showed. That is a different, do I have any here? I don't think I have any in here right now. Yes, I do have some. Okay, so these little step switches, it's a similar type of situation. Those little step switches work with this little step switch breakout, just like MX key switches work with this key switch breakout. This one has a little bit more going on given that it's diode matrixed together, ready to go, ready to solder to and does not need to be plugged into a red board and has the NeoPixels, so. All right, well, thanks everyone for stopping by. Freighter Fruit Industries, I'm John Park and this has been JP's product pick of the week. See you next time.