Altoids tins have long been a favorite among DIY enthusiasts as ideal enclosures for guarding and protecting their projects. However, YouTuber "flurples" decided to combine them with his favorite genre: mechanical keyboards. The final result is the Mintboard, a "40% keyboard" with custom keycaps, a good dose of 3D printing, and Bluetooth support to connect to any device.
Basic Bluetooth keyboards average around 10 euros on various online platforms, but these are models intended for casual use. In other words, they have a "disposable" profile that cannot be easily ignored. Of course, the market offers premium options if we are willing to increase our investment, but there is also the DIY route, which brings its own advantages to the table.
An open design is always easier to repair, and to this we add the always valuable factor of customization, which many users frequently seek. With that in mind, we arrive at the channel of "flurples", who recently combined a custom keyboard with a Bluetooth module, and used an Altoids tin as the enclosure. Its name? Mintboard.
Mintboard: How to Build a Bluetooth Keyboard in an Altoids Tin
The first step was to take measurements: An Altoids tin has estimated dimensions of 91 x 56 x 21 millimeters, and with those values, "flurples" headed to Digikey to purchase the switches. The original plan was to create a 60% keyboard, but with 6.5 millimeters between the most extreme points of each switch, he decided to "drop down" to a 40% design. By defining a maximum distance of 7.3 millimeters between one key and another, the keyboard ended up being 87.6 millimeters wide, very close to the 91 mm limit.
Then he focused on creating the PCB, using a classic Arduino Pro Micro (or one of its 17 million clones) as the base. Each switch has its own diode, which should guarantee NKRO support. After ordering the PCB fabrication, "flurples" entered the firmware phase. One of the most interesting parts of the Mintboard is its controller module, the nice! Nano. In addition to being compatible with the Pro Micro layout, the nice! Nano includes Bluetooth "and" battery charge control, a 3-in-1 solution that notably simplifies the fabrication of wireless keyboards. The only "problem" is that it does not support QMK firmware, which forced "flurples" to adopt ZMK.
The design of the 3D parts required more than one revision, but in the end everything fit so well that the Altoids tin is basically optional. The last effort was for the keycaps: With the help of a Cricut machine and a nail protector (the kind that harden under ultraviolet light), the keycaps turned out almost perfect.
(Editor's note: There are no details on GitHub yet, but I imagine that will change soon.)
Source: Hackaday
