Accessing hackaday.com with one bright key press.

This definitely isn't a super practical project but I thought of the play on words with "cree" and needed to make it a reality. Someday I'd like to try and build some cherry mx keycaps with these COB LEDs embedded in them so they can fit on standard mx keyboard switches. This project was a first test of the concept. It might not be feasible to build a large keyboard like this because of the cost of these LEDs. Plus the brightness might be distracting if you were actively typing on it. I’m limiting the current to a fraction of the max current that these LEDs can handle. I wanted to avoid melting the PLA case and burning my eyes and fingertips. I chose to use 38 awg enameled copper wire to connect the LEDs to the pcb. This is mainly an aesthetic choice to keep the front of the keypad looking clean.

I'm using a usb dongle I made for previous project as the receiver for the cree-board. The dongle is just a ESP32-S2 module, usb connector, and power regulator. The ESP32-S2 has USB hid support which works perfect for this project. I've also include the files for the dongle in this project page.