Mechanical Keypad With Rotary Input & GPIO Breakout!
When driving your computer, a keyboard and mouse work well, and can be greatly enhanced by memorizing a few shortcut keys combinations. If you’d like to take things to the next level, a third input device, like a macropad or stream deck, can speed things up even further. To help with your workflow, adding buttons and a rotary input knob, plus broken out GPIO pins for experimentation, I present the JC Pro Macro 2 rotary input device.
This device, a greatly enhanced version of the original JC Pro Macro, features 8 mechanical key switches, with addressable LEDs underneath each one to provide lighting. A rotary encoder knob “rounds” out the pad, which works very well for volume adjustment, and scrolling through frames while video editing. 4 lights underneath the PCB provide additional illumination, and a laser-cut base with rubber pads keeps the setup in place.
Beyond being a normal macropad, the JCPM2 is designed for experimentation. It features 5 GPIO pins, which are broken out from its swappable Pro Micro ATmega32U4 microcontroller board, plus 5V and GND. These can be used to transmit I2C data for a small OLED screen, or for other uses, and can even power a small fan if you need a bit of keystroke-enabled breeze.
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As explained here, the JCPM2 was first funded on Kickstarter, before being put up for sale on Tindie. If you’re thinking about crowdfunding a project, you may want to also consider how you can continue to put your success (or even not-quite-success) to work on Tindie after it’s finished!