Hello! Coming at you with a February update. Two months of progress in a single update. This is a fairly long and technical one, mostly about hardware and design. Enjoy!

Final Enclosure Renders & Production Underway

I don’t like using renders for updates, but I figured it would be a good time to post an update to demonstrate the last few months of progress and pulling things together, as they are slated for production any day now. Here’s a few of the updated enclosure so you will know what to expect on your finished unit. I’ll break down the important pieces in more detail.

New Keyboard PCB

Maybe the most important of updates was finalizing, testing, and implementing a new keyboard PCB with integrated MCU. Long story short: the original Zerowriter PCB was going to be unexpectedly (and prohibitively) expensive to produce, use a sort of proprietary logic, and was standing in the way of my goals for this project. So I went back to the drawing board and built out a traditional keyboard circuit, which cut the cost and power consumption of the keyboard down big time.

You may notice also that the keyboard has been tightened up — there are no longer spaces between keys, as I have adopted proper spacing for the keys per kailh’s spec. This makes the entire unit a considerably less wide, with the unit now right around 280mm in width. That’s just about 11 inches. And for a portable device, that is a great thing.

I decided to use a clocked down ESP32 to drive the keyboard, which is overkill for a keyboard MCU, but now anyone looking to customize the keyboard only needs to learn one MCU for the whole project — both the Zerowriter and Inkplate use the same ESP32-WROOM module. This also means for any folks out there looking to tinker, you will have a very powerful keyboard MCU that could go a lot more for you.

Alongside this, the keyboard PCB was cleaned up considerably and is undergoing final testing with my friends at Soldered before mass production.

Note that the keyboard PCB is a removable component. This means you could swap out the keyboard entirely for a different design, like an ortho keyboard layout, or a full 100% keyboard, maybe make it tiny with a 40% keyboard, or whatever you want! And of course, a nice thing about modular components: you can just replace the keyboard component if it needed repairs. Kind of cool, right?

New Keycaps

I’m expecting to receive the new keycaps shortly, and will post some pictures. The bulk of them are headed to Croatia for final assembly. As stated before, the Zerowriter Ink will ship with a full set of English keycaps with a printed legend for each key. These also will include 4 optional arrows keys — left, right, up, down.

The new keycaps look awesome, and were designed in collaboration with my friend Darryl at lowprokb.ca — thank you to him, and the great work he is doing there.

I’m working on a pack of 1u (normal-sized) keys to cover the most common Latin-based characters for most European, French Canadian, and Spanish keyboards. These would be available post-campaign at cost if I can sort out the logistics. My plan here is to do a pack of 20-30 of the most common characters, and a few blanks. Of course, you could also use a tool to design your own keycaps.

IO Breakout PCB

Zerowriter Ink now has a proper IO board along the right edge of the device. This means you can easily access a USB-C for power, SD card, and power switch, as well as power LED. This change meant some design adjustments to the original Inkplate 5 V2, but now everything will route nicely, and create a commercial-ready device that will be a pleasure to use.

If you take a look at the modified Inkplate 5v2, you’ll see some new connectors here: one for the keyboard PCB, and one for the IO breakout, with some unnecessary components shifted or removed.

Fully Rebuilt Enclosure

My friends at Momentum Design take their work seriously, and they seriously improved the enclosure for the Zerowriter Ink. It exists in a funny in-between. I want something that looks professional, clean, and utilitarian. But I also want to provide the flexibility for people to 3D print their own enclosures, and to encourage people to swap the case with different designs, styles, and colours.

The new design accomplishes that. The standoffs and supports have been shifted to provide a more rigid typing experience and better structural integrity throughout. The enclosure itself is about 15mm tall, which is mighty impressive for a piece of indie hardware. We’re using heat-resistant PETG so those in warmer climates don’t need to worry about warping or damage. And, most importantly, the enclosure better supports the different components inside properly to ensure your device will keep going for a long time.

Furthermore, the new design is clean and approachable internally. When you open up your Zerowriter Ink, you can access the display PCB, the breakout PCB, the keyboard PCB, the battery, and all the components. Nice, simple, and what you would expect.

Production Timelines

Everything is moving along, and it seems like things are still on track for general fulfillment in April.

I expect to have a production-ready final unit for testing in my hands shortly. And of course, I will share tons of images and videos when that happens, and you’ll know what to expect in the coming months. I’m really, really excited to get my hands on it. The collaboration and effort involved from all sides of the world has been spectacular.

If there are any snags with the production-ready units that need some time to fix, I will take it and keep you updated along the way.

Next update will be more about the software and getting things ready for the last leg of testing.

Talk again soon!