Hey all,
I am an owner of an original OP-1 with keyboard issues like many others, and it seems like the replacement part has not been in stock for a long while now. Makes sense taking the age of the device into consideration.
As someone who is vehemently anti e-waste I’ve decided to go on a long term journey to create a replacement keyboard part for the OP-1, and my goal is to make it accessible and repairable as possible.
This is a big task, and I wanted to ask on this forum is there would be interest in this project, and suggestions as the project progresses. Thank you in advance!
I’ll post my progress on this thread, feel free to drop comments or suggestions.
The beginning of this project is to figure out why the keyboards fail, and the answer seems to be pretty straightforward. The keyboard membrane consists of thin traces leading to its connectors, some on top of others. After many uses the traces seem to slowly deteriorate, cutting off inputs from the key presses. That seems to be the problem for my keyboard at least, let me know if other issues are observed. Below is a rough draft of the traces. Yellow layer is the bottom layer, blues connect a few of the traces together by overlapping other traces. The red traces are folded over onto the yellow traces so that the contacts will meet when the keys are pressed.
I assume the keyboard was designed in this way to keep the profile as thin as possible, and this was probably the best solution for the time. 10 years later and technology has advanced, focusing on mechanical keyboards. Laptops and macbooks have been known for their thin keys (whether you like them or not), and we are now able to build mechanical keyboards in a similar fashion. Many companys such as Cherry MX, Razer, Corsair, and other more niche keyboard companies have created keys made for a thin profile.
The reason to decide on making a mechanical keyboard format is the ease of repair. Traces like the current OP-1’s keyboard design are very thin in order to fit all of them on this small layout, so they will naturally decay with more and more use. Mechanical keyboards are much more easily fixable. PCB’s are much less prone to damage, and with the ability to remove and replace smaller parts that are soldered onto the board, hopefully this project will help the OP-1 last for many many more years.
First step is to finalize all the pin connections, then get to designing. Thankfully membrane based designs like these are relatively simple in terms of how they function, so I hope I can find a design that works soon.
