wireless dongle

wireless dongle

for wireless we got zmk firmware like we got qmk for wired
usually its nrf52840 mcu on the keyboard  which connects to the pc bluetooth.. now some systems dont have a bluetooth like mine so what do we do? we buy a shitty tplink dongle 
now that works well and all but its pain when u switch systems or travel with the keyboard like office to and from 
not every pc have a bluetooth capability 

hence this project
the plan was to make a dongle which works like a 2.4g dongle u get on them chinese boards(zmk does not supprt 2.4g protocol..yet)
essentially make it so that u plug in the dongle in any system and just start typing no need to configure the bt profile and stuff, in practice works just like 2.4g thing works but using bluetooth instead.

this whole thing was very much inspired from already existing project called prospector
what i did is just shrunk it down in foam of a usb dongle so its easy to carry, store and use.
i just did a nrf52840 mcu breakout design and added usb port at top with pcb antenna at the bottom while trying to keep it as small as possible.
its a 2layer pcb and since its bga chip i only added pads which are in actual use so its easy to assembly by hand.

another added benifit is it increasesthe battery life of the connected keyboard as now this dongle acts as the master device and connected device a slave.

Back to blog