Further steps towards mass production

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update!

TL;DR: We’ve been making good progress towards mass production. The corrected prototype PCBs have been manufactured, tested, and sent to TÜV Netherlands for final certification. The PCBs for the pilot run are being manufactured. The configuration parser of the firmware has been fully implemented. BusPal got fixed, allowing us to update the firmwares of both keyboard halves. We’ll close the order cancellation period for batch 1 in a week.

You can always check out the expected delivery date and update your shipping address on your Crowd Supply account page.

Closing order cancellation for batch 1

Order cancellation for batch 1 will be closed in a week. You’re likely to be in batch 1 if your order was made on or before 2017-07-12. The reason is that we’ve already summarized the orders of batch 1, and we’re assembling these orders according to that plan. It’d cause a lot of potential problems to update the orders in the middle of assembly, and the best solution forward is to disallow order cancellation. You can cancel your order until 2017-08-24 but not afterwards. Thank you for understanding!

Assembling the plates and switches

Our team is working to assemble the 2,000 UHKs of the first batch. Right now, they’re busy with putting switches into the plates. So far, 1,000 pairs of plates have been assembled.

They’ve also half-assembled 150 pair of cases including the magnets, magnet-counter parts, and inserts, and excluding the small rubber feet and the back stickers. It’s a joy to see the fruits of their labor.

Miscellaneous parts

Lately, some simple but necessary parts arrived from our suppliers, such as the USB cables and the bridge cables. What you see are only some of the many boxes.

We’ve also finished with the metal guides. There are 16,000 of them.

1,300 flip-out feet have been molded.

These are a some of the 5,000 case buttons manufactured so far.

2,000 pairs of vertical PCBs have been fabricated. These will mate with the modules, or with each other when the UHK halves are merged.

Palm rests

Finally, the palm rests for the pilot run are now ready.

Adding a pair of these palm rests to my prototype truly elevated the overall look and comfort level. It was like putting on the crown jewel.

Please note that backlit UHKs are not available yet. See our Everything about UHK backlighting post.

Electronics progress

Luckily, the bypass capacitor related fix that I outlined in our previous update solved the I2C communication issue, even though my initial fix didn’t.

When I soldered the through-hole capacitors to the previous version of our PCB it seemed like a success, but it wasn’t. I realized that communication was still unstable. Then I started emailing back and forth with Eben Qiu, field application engineer of ISSI, and he persuaded me that this must be the issue.

Eben sent me an application note titled AN-035-EN Layout Guidelines for IS31FL3731-SASL2 and a further Layout guideline document tailored to the UHK. Based on his advices, I slightly but carefully redesigned the board around the LED driver ICs. The main thing is that the bypass caps must be put as close to the GND and VCC pins of the ICs as possible. GND and VCC traces must be as thick as possible.

I’m happy to report that the new layout has made I2C communication rock solid, but it’s still possible that it’ll hang every now and then, so we’ll combat this issue in two other ways.

First, I’ve made sure that the state of the LEDs is cached by the master MCU and it only sends updates to the LED drivers when the LED values actually change. By minimizing the amount of communication, we also give minimal chance to the LED drivers to screw I2C.

Second, we’ll make the I2C driver much more robust, so that it’ll be able to recover immediately from errors. Only this solution will result in true robustness.

Having the chance to give the board more attention, I also improved the acoustic noise of the UHK. The noise level was already better than it used to be a while ago, but a subtle high-pitched noise could be heard in a very silent environment. Fortunately, Eben also shared another application note with me titled AN-012-EN Reduce acoustic noise of IS31FL3236 EVB.

I ended up using tantalum electrolytic capacitors instead of ceramic capacitors, which outperformed my wildest expectations in the acoustic noise department. The newest boards are so silent that I cannot hear a damn thing, even when putting my ear as close to the keyboard as possible. And that’s when every LED is driven with full power, which would generate the most noise.

Next up, we went to TÜV Hungary to conduct final measurements at their lab. We finished in the record-breaking time of an hour for both of our prototypes, with the best results so far, and then left the prototypes there. They will send them to TÜV Netherlands for final FCC and CE certification. We should have those papers soon.

Finally, I sent the gerbers to our PCBA contractor, and they started fabricating the boards of the pilot run.

Firmware progress

We’ve already had a fair number of talented contributors, and it looks like we keep attracting some of the best talent, and this time truly one of the best in the world.

The name of our most recent contributor is Erich Styger and his name is familiar to everybody who has ever worked with Kinetis microcontrollers. That’s because if you search for a Kinetis related issue, you’ll bump into one of his blog posts as the first result which usually also contains the solution to your problem.

Erich started out as a compiler engineer, then accumulated more than 20 years of experience as an embedded systems engineer, and now he works as a professor at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and works with the ETH Zürich, and also for NXP. His MCU on Eclipse blog is the go-to place for everything Kinetis, and many consider him the world’s most knowledgeable professional in this space.

As you can imagine, Erich is very busy, but over a fair number of emails I’ve managed to persuade him that the UHK is the best thing since sliced bread, and given the development capabilities and open nature of our keyboard, he became quite interested in it. So much so that he allowed me to send him a prototype, then he sent us his fair share of contributions.

Every one if his contributions is a definite step forward, but the one I consider the most valuable is his BusPal fix, as it finally enables the right side firmware to route the firmware to the left keyboard, allowing us to upgrade the firmware of both keyboard halves, and coincidentally the firmwares of the modules, too! He’s also written a relevant blog post on his blog.

Mad props and a pilot run UHK with a palm rest goes to Erich. I feel fortunate, thrilled, and honored beyond words to have him contribute.

Meanwhile, Eric (not Erich), our intern has been hard at work and finished fully implementing the configuration parser. He also started implementing the macro engine. Unfortunately, his internship period is over, so the macro engine is not ready yet, but he was making great progress which I’m very happy about. Thanks so much for your hard work, attention to details, and diligence, Eric!

With the configuration parser in place, the UHK is able to switch across keymaps which was the last major remaining parser related issue. The macro engine will not entirely be ready by the time of the pilot run, but we’ll be gradually shaping it, and it should be ready in the not so distant future.

In the meantime, I implemented an async I2C EEPROM driver, so now the firmware is able to transfer the configuration to and from the EEPROM, enabling the UHK to persist the configuration.

Estimated delivery and standing issues

These are the major standing issues that affect the delivery of the pilot run:

• Top case parts: We’ve already molded numerous cases, but we’re still working on improving the surface quality of the top parts. The molds should be ready in 1-2 weeks at which point we’ll manufacture 150 pairs of them.
• Packaging and back stickers: We’ve been working a lot on the design of the packaging of the UHK and the palm rest and we believe they’ll be very fancy. We’ve ordered 3,000 UHK boxes and 1,500 palm rest boxes which may take 3-4 weeks to be manufactured but hopefully we’ll be able to get some of them earlier for the pilot run.
• PCBs: The PCBs are being manufactured and are expected to be ready in August. Then our PCBA contract manufacturer will assemble 50 of them for the pilot run.
• FCC and CE certification: We don’t have a solid ETA about this, but chances are good that this will be done by the end of August.

The bottom line is that we’re doing absolutely everything we can to deliver the pilot run by the end of August.

Thank you for reading this update! As always, we’ll be keeping you updated on a monthly basis via our blog and newsletter.

Talk to you on 2017-09-14!

EMC pre-compliance testing successful

Hello and welcome to this month’s UHK update!

TL;DR: Our most recent prototypes have successfully passed EMC pre-compliance testing. The final certification will be taking place in June and is expected to take 4-5 weeks which will push delivery to July. Manufacturing is proceeding apace. One of our prototypes has became a movie star.

You can always check out the expected delivery date and update your shipping address on your Crowd Supply account page.

EMC pre-testing

Not long after our previous update, we assembled 6 prototypes for the upcoming EMC pre-compliance measurement. These are v7.2 prototypes featuring EMC redesigns and related extra components, such as a ferrite choke.

This time, instead of going to T-Network, we went to TÜV which was a much better experience. Their control room is more modern and tidier.

They use a more sophisticated measurement software.

Their measurement chamber is more spacious.

We told you the last time that the laptop we brought didn’t pass the test in itself, so we’ve made sure to bring a MacBook Pro this time to avoid such problems.

The measurements taken by TÜV are of considerably higher resolution than those at T-Network, and they do take proportionally more time. Instead of taking around 3 minutes, they take about 15 minutes each. This time, we passed the test! You can see the result below.

This may look like a fail, but it's not! There are two peaks that are above the safety zone, but as it turns out, there are two measurements involved. In the first measurement, the peaks get detected. In the second, the peaks are more closely investigated which usually results in considerably lower values. The final values are marked with blue rectangles below the peaks, and they're all within the safety zone.

This is clearly a much better result than anything we’ve ever measured, although admittedly, the safety margin is quite tight around 84 Mhz. Endre has an idea how to make it even better by replacing some components, and we’ll test his idea in a week, but we’ve already booked a certification date for June regardless.

We’ll send two final prototypes to TÜV Hungary by the end of May, who will in turn forward the prototypes to TÜV Netherlands where the actual certification will take place. The certification itself is expected to take 4-5 weeks. This is longer than anticipated and the PCBs can only be mass produced after the certification succeeds. Unfortunately, this pushes delivery to July.

Manufacturing news

Let’s see some major news from the manufacturing department:

• 1,000 steel plates have been manufactured and 3,000 more are in the works. Placement of the switches into the plates will begin soon.

• A pilot run of 100 pairs of the wooden palm rest parts have been ordered, and 900 pairs are set to follow.
• The testing of the modified injection molding tools will take place in a week.

One of our prototypes has became a movie star

About a year ago, the assistant propmaster of Netflix series Sense8 got in touch with us. She told us that there’ll be a hacking scene in the series, and asked us whether we could provide a prototype to be filmed. Of course, we said yes in a heartbeat. Fast forward one year, we got featured in the series!

You can see the UHK prototype in:

• S2E03 (Obligate Mutualisms): 20:02 (-31:13)
• S2E04 (Polyphony): 2:11 (-55:56) multiple cuts in 10 seconds, 5:01 (-53:06)

And a couple more spots here and there. You’re welcome to let us know if you notice another scene.

Needless to say, we’re thrilled to be featured. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Netflix!

This wraps up our May update, Ladies and Gentlemen. A lot of things are happening in parallel as usual, and with the certification of the PCBs on the horizon, we’re really getting close.

As always, we’ll be keeping you updated on a weekly basis on social media, and on a monthly basis in this blog and our newsletter.

Talk to you on 2017-06-15!

Improved EMC test results and incoming parts

Hello, and welcome to this month’s UHK update!

TL;DR: Our most recent EMC test results are much better than the previous results, but they’re still not good enough. We’re working hard on our new prototype to pass the tests, but this delays the project by about a month. Lots of progress is happening on other fronts, too. Please read on!

Parts are flowing in

The UHK contains loads of components, and some critical ones are flowing in one by one. These are the most recent parts:

100 ANSI left, 100 ISO left, and 100 right plates have been manufactured so far. These plates will be used for the first production run. Of those plates, we have 20 of each in hand to check their quality and accuracy.

These 2 plates were surface treated with Nickel and Zinc.

There are also loads of smaller components that arrived lately:

We’ve already ordered the switches, keycaps, keycap stabilizers, and displays which are expected to arrive soon.

The manufacturing of the guides and magnet counterparts is in progress. These are multi-step manufacturing processes, and they’re well underway.

The state of the molds

Currently, the molds are being tweaked, and the tweaks are mostly cosmetic by nature. All things considered, they’re already in very good shape.

András showed the current case samples to one of his friends recently, who works for a contractor of a premium car manufacturer, and his friend was genuinely impressed by the quality of the case, so we’re already doing pretty well.

Apart from the cosmetic fixes, we also plan to add one or two snap fits to make the case more rigid when the palm rest is attached to it. These modifications won’t affect our schedule.

EMC testing, 2nd round

Here we go again. Since our last update, we’ve created new prototypes to be tested in the EMC lab.

These are actually two right keyboard halves. The left keyboard half hasn’t been redesigned because, according to our tests, the USB is the major culprit when it comes to EMC issues, which are located on the right half.

We were told that a 4-layer PCB should perform better when it comes to emissions than a 2-layer one, so I decided that we should create both a 2-layer and a 4-layer PCB and see how they stack up.

The naked eye can hardly tell the 2-layer and the 4-layer PCBs apart, so I put an “L4” identifier right after the PCB identifier text for the 4-layer PCB. Now it’s easy to tell.

Even though my hopes were high that we’d pass the tests with the new boards, I prepared for the worst and was looking for expert help. That’s how I found Endre Köcze.

Endre has a lot of experience behind him as an electronics engineer, and he’s a pleasure to work with. He has taken a thorough look at the UHK design, and we went to the EMC test together.

The test results started off as quite a surprise. First, we measured only the laptop as a reference point, and according to the measurements, it didn’t pass! Go figure.

Previously, we used Robi’s laptop, which passed the test with flying colors. This, however, was Anna’s, my wife’s laptop. Admittedly, this laptop is not as fancy as Robi’s laptop, but a reputable manufacturer makes it, and it should also pass the test.

The first takeaway is that we’ll bring as many laptops as we can next time, pick the least heavily emitting one, and use it in further measurements.

Next, we put the laptop under the measurement table, and then its measured emission got just below the red line. But when we added a shielded USB cable, even with the ferrite on the host end, it went just above the limit. This is clearly not ideal, but this is the best we could do on the spot. The measurements are still useful, and we’ll use a better laptop next time.

In this setup, the UHK was on the table, which is the center of measurement towards which the antenna points. Being under the table, the laptop didn’t affect the measurements so much. Next time, we’ll probably use a 5-meter-long USB cable and put the laptop as far as possible.

Around the end of the measurement, the OS shut down because the battery was so low. We could still use the laptop without the OS running, but both the low battery state and the fact that no OS was running might have affected the last four measurements. The lesson here is obvious: Power the laptop from a damn charger! And on that note, we’ll probably put the charger as far from the center of the measurement as possible, too, and use an extension cord to power it.

As for the actual UHK measurements, the results are very promising. The measurements of the 2-layer PCB were no more than 4 dB above the limit and no more than 7 dB above the limit with the 4-layer PCB. This is very promising compared to the first round of measurements for which even 16 and 18 dB above-the-limit values were measured.

Endre has a concrete plan regarding the redesign of the PCBs. He’d like to add a common mode choke and ferrite beads at strategic places, and István is ready to redesign the boards accordingly.

In addition to the changes mentioned above, I plan to implement a number of firmware test features so that we’ll be able to narrow down the cause of various spikes. I think of features like disabling I2C / USB / backlighting and adjusting the clock speed of the MCU with dedicated keys on the keyboard.

I think that with all the above test procedures, test modes, and redesigns in place, we shall defeat the EMC issues with the next prototype, which should be ready in a month.

Due to the EMC hurdles, we must delay delivery by a month. This is frustrating but very much necessary to make the UHK happen. We’re working as hard as we can to hit it soon.

In our true style, we’ll be keeping you up-to-date in our weekly social media updates and monthly newsletters. Thank you for tuning in, and talk to you on 2017-04-13.

Defeating electrical noise and preparing for EMC tests

Welcome to our monthly progress update! There is no shortage of news from this last month, so let’s go through them one by one!

Plastic case

We’ve already received samples of the bottom case parts, the buttons on the plastic case, and the top left and top right parts are well on their way. The following image is the top left part of the case with the sprue left on it.

As it turns out, the ejector pins of the top left mold are unable to eject the part properly, so our contractor is in the process of adding an extra pin. We shall soon receive all the plastic parts of the case to evaluate them.

Palm rest

In the last update, we showed you the 3D printed prototypes of the palm rest. We also showed you foams of different types that could go into the palm rest. In the meantime, we’ve been thinking about using an alternative material to foam: wood.

Wood palm rests are considered to be the most premium solution. They’re nice to touch, pleasing to the eye, and last longer than foam palm rests. This is how our current palm rest prototype looks like.

You can see the base plates of the palm rest on top. They’re milled out of solid aluminium, then anodized, and finally covered with lacquer. The left one was powder coated with glossy lacquer that did not change the black anodized color, and the right was covered with matte lacquer that changed the black anodized color quite a bit.

The current base plates feel extremely robust and look pretty nice, but to make them even nicer, we’re thinking about powder coating them black instead of anodizing them. This would result in a solid, semi-gloss, black color. We’ll give it a try later.

As for the wood parts, beech wood was used which got slightly dyed, and then a glossy lacquer layer was applied. The gloss is too much, so we plan to settle with semi-gloss lacquer, and we’ll probably end up using a darker brown paint.

LED display

The last time we updated you, we mentioned that our LED display was having ghosting issues. This was caused by the white LEDs whose forward voltage was significantly higher than the other red and yellow LEDs.

We haven’t found a viable solution regarding the white LEDs, so we ended up using yellow LEDs for the icons. This makes the charlieplexed LED matrix use only red and yellow LEDs whose forward voltage is similar.

This simple fix has fully resolved the ghosting issue. Ghosts busted!

Bridge cable

One would think that the bridge cable is a no-brainer. After all, it’s just a simple spiral cable, so let’s just pick a random cable from any manufacturer and call it a day, right? As it turns out, that’s not exactly the case.

In the spirit of future-proofing the UHK for backlighting, I tested the bridge cable with all switch LEDs on to see whether it carries enough current to the LEDs.

It’s clear that the right half is brighter than left. When connected via the board-to-board connector, the brightness level evened out the halves. It became apparent that the voltage drop of the bridge cable was very high.

I figured out that there are two factors that affect this issue, which are the diameter and the material of the wires inside of the cable. My bridge cable was made of copper-clad steel instead of pure copper, which conducts electricity much better. As for the diameter, the wires of my cable were extremely thin.

I then started contacting spiral cable manufacturers to learn more details and find the best option. As it turns out, 24-30 AWG diameter wires can be crimped to RJ jacks, so I asked for 24, 26, 38, and 30 AWG copper cable samples.

After testing them, I could confirm that the resistance of these cables was much lower than my original cables, and lighting was even across the keyboard halves with any of them. In order to minimize the voltage drop, I wanted to pick the thickest 24 AWG cable.

That’s when the manufacturer warned me that 24 AWG cables may not retain their shape after stretching them moderately, which was an issue I was able to confirm. I figured that it’s the plastic exterior of these cables that provide the flexibility. There was too much copper in thicker cables, which made them not retain their shape after flexing. After testing the samples, I figured that 28 AWG and 30 AWG retained their shape well. So I picked the thicker 28 AWG one, and this will be our final cable.

Lesson of the story: not all cables are created equal, and the devil is in the details!

Electrical issues

The UHK will have to pass EMC tests so that we can stick FCC and CE logos on the back, allowing for worldwide distribution. Being aware of this issue, I knew the time had come to send one of our prototypes to an electrical engineer to be investigated from an EMC standpoint.

Luckily, a friend of mine, Robi, just happens to be an electrical engineer. He’s not even a mediocre engineer, but a great one, and he was very willing to take a peek at our prototype.

After receiving the prototype, Robi was eager to get his hands dirty. The first thing he did is hook his prototype up to a scope. The results were somewhat worrying.

He told me that given this heavy electrical noise, there is not a fighting chance we’ll pass EMC tests.

About 5 minutes later he told me that he had bad news and good news. The good news is that he managed to solve the electrical noise issue.

The bad news is that I wouldn’t like the solution.

The elephant in the room is the monstrous electrolytic capacitor soldered onto the PCB. If you’re afraid that it won’t fit inside of the UHK case, you guessed it right!

Luckily, using multiple SMD ceramic capacitors can provide sufficiently high capacitance. Robi also suggested using a ferrite bead and some extra capacitors near to the USB connector to further reduce electrical noise issues.

Acoustic noise

In the previous update, I mentioned that our PCBs were emitting some audible noise which was proportional with the number of LEDs enabled. Robi also looked into this issue and the solution has several steps to it.

First, throwing more capacitors onto the PCB drastically reduces electrical noise, which in turn also reduces the piezoelectric effect responsible for the audible noise.

Second, the ceramic capacitors will be placed in a way that they won’t enforce each other’s vibrating effect.

Third, we’ll use higher value resistors for the R_EXT pins of the LED drivers because the current consumed by our latest prototype with all LEDs enabled is higher than the maximum current the USB connection can provide. Lower current draw will translate to lower noise, and given the logarithmic sensitivity of the human eye, the brightness difference will hardly be noticeable. LED lifespan will also benefit from this change.

We’re fairly confident that the above fixes will resolve every electronic issue. Our next PCB should be ready to pass EMC tests!

Bootloader

Santiago has been extremely busy with his work at NXP (now Qualcomm). So much so that he’s had hardly any time for us, but luckily, he managed to spend a whole weekend on the bootloader recently. Because of his efforts, the master bootloader is working! This means that it’s now possible to update the firmware on the right keyboard half via USB.

But that’s only half of the story. The other half involves implementing the proxy which will route the firmware of left keyboard half and modules via the right keyboard half. If everything goes well, Santiago be able to allocate enough time to get this done soon.

Our new contributor

I briefly mentioned my friend, Róbert Csordás, above. He has been a huge help in solving the electrical issues of our design, so this is the part where we express our appreciation.

He hasn’t only helped with electrical issues, but also improved the firmware in a lot of ways. He implemented a QWERTY layout, then made the communication between the keyboard halves more robust.

Robi is already a full-time UHK user. His only wish is to receive a plastic case for his prototype, so that the bare solder joints of the PCB won’t scratch his desk. We’ll make sure to send him a final UHK with all the bells and whistles as soon as we can.

Thank you so much, Robi!

Project progress and schedule

Right now, the steel guides, the feet mold, the rubber mold, and the magnet counterparts are being manufactured.

The molds of the case and the steel plate cutting tool are being adjusted to meet our manufacturing constraints. This is planned, but it will take a little longer than expected.

The PCB is being redesigned as described above in order to minimize electronic and acoustic noise. It will be ready by the end of the upcoming week, and then we’ll put it through EMC tests in December. We should have the necessary certificates by that time. We’ll launch a prototype run for the PCBs in January and start our first full production batch in February.

By the time the boards get manufactured, we’ll have all the parts and packaging in our warehouse, ready to be assembled and shipped.

We can assure you that everything happens according to the grand plan, but many things take longer than expected. We know how much you would love to have a UHK by the holidays, and we’re doing everything we can to deliver as soon as possible, but we can’t reasonably expect to ship sooner than February.

We’ll keep these updates coming with clockwork accuracy, so you’ll be aware of our progress at all time. Should you have any questions, we’re always here for you.

Thank you for your continued support, and we’ll talk to you again on 2016-12-15.