⌨ Ladispad

Ladispad is a custom-made 11 key macropad with 2 rotary encoders designed for the simplicity and the ease of assembly for non technical users. Macropads are not a new thing. Browsing the internet will lead to to dozens of open-source macropads that let you print your own PCB and assemble it at home, but most of these macropads use matrixes, which will force you to solder diodes adding a little complexity to the process.

Ladispad uses a direct pin approach. That means you don't need to solder diodes. Additionally, I managed to add 2 rotary encoders and a fully customizable OLED screen, which can be omitted if you choose.

Ladispad uses a Pro Micro as its main controller. It's very affordable, and there are many variants with different USB ports and sizes. I designed the PCB so it will be compatible which whatever you choose.

The Ladispad is QMK/Via and soon Vial compatible which will add to the ease of use in case you want to program your encoders on the fly without the need to flash the firmware every time you do so.

Included are the SVG files for the acrylic cases I made for the pad. You can laser cut it using the online service provider of your choice.

👍 What makes the Ladispad unique:

• Minimal components needed to have a fully functional macropad
• 2 Rotary encoders implemented with extra function with layer switching
• Compatible with different Pro Micro sizes
• Acrylic case cutout included

📃 Things you need to get the whole experience:

• Pro Micro (micro USB, mini USB, USB-C)
• 9 cherry MX style switches
• 2 Rotary Encoders (EC11)
• OLED display 128x32 (SSD1306)
• The laser cut acrylic case
• 4 M3 screws

⁉ How to make your own:

• Ordering the PCB
  • Download the Gerber.zip file from the release page
  • Order the PCB from a PCB manufacturer site, I have used PCBway and it cost 5$ + shipping for 5 PCBs
• Making the Case
  • Download the case.zip file from the release page
  • Submit the files to a laser cutting service provider, or cut it yourself if you are blessed with a laser cutter. I can recommend Elecrow, pretty cheap and reliable.
  • The thickness of the parts is as follows:
    • The top and bottom layers are 3 mm
    • The middle layers (middle layer 1 and middle layer 2) are 8 mm
• Buy the parts listed above
• Solder the Pro Micro, switches, rotary encoders, and the OLED screen
• Either download the hex file from the release page and flash it before assembling the case (short the RESET and GND pins as I have not added a dedicated reset button, will be added in the future), or you can also edit the QMK keymap file in the repo for more customizability. Clone the repo if that is the case.
• Enjoy your new macropad

📷 Images:

Customize your keyboard

To customize the keyboard on macOS you need the following steps:

1. Install qmk with brew install qmk/qmk/qmk
2. Checkout the qmk_firmware repo from https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware
3. Copy the qmk/ladis folder into the keyboards folder of the repository
4. (optional) For a new keyboard layout create one with qmk new-keymap -kb ladis
5. Change the behaviour of the keyboard in the keymap.c file
6. Compile your new keymap with qmk compile -kb ladis -km $KEYMAP
7. Use QMK-Toolbox to flash the new firmware onto your ladispad

Update the layer images

To create your own images for a layer create an image file with 128×32 dimension. Upload the file to https://joric.github.io/qle/ and use the raw data representation in the keymap.c file

static const char PROGMEM raw_logo[] = {
       $RAW_IMAGE
};

Now compile and upload the firmware again and the new images should be displayed.