Alexey's blog

Atreus Keyboard

1 minute read Published: 2015-04-13

I finally got my very first mechanical keyboard.

I was looking for something small and as portable as possible. So after checking out the r/MechanicalKeyboards subreddit for a little bit, I stumbled upon the Atreus Keyboard kit and decided to get one.

Now, please keep in mind that I've never soldered anything in my life prior to ordering this set. I had to learn and practice on the small Velleman kits they sell at Radioshack.

A big thank you goes out to thr3ddy for giving lots of tips on how to solder and sending me some neat Github stickers, and to Phil Hagelberg for putting this kit together in the first place.

Below is a summary of my assembly process.

unpacking2

unpacking3

Soundtrack of the whole thing. music

All nice and clean. finished_sanding

finished_oiling

This is my soldering setup. Yes, the monkey too. soldering_setup

Soldered the diodes. diodes

Sticking the diode legs inside the microcontroller was kinda annoying. microcontroller

Putting the microcontroller in and soldering it. microcontroller_in

soldering_microcontroller

Preparing to solder the switches. preparing_the_switches

All switches ready, time to upload the firmware. firmware_upload

And there we go. Yes, I actually assembled it without putting in the USB cord, how silly. assembled

assembled2

final