As part of designing a new prototype of my PDA, I was working on new case and buttons. Old buttons had some problems:
- There was too few of them (4 general purpose and one power button)
- They had weird feel to them
- Each one felt different
It turned out that button design is a bit harder thing to do than I previously thought. So I went back to the drawing board (FreeCAD). You can see updated buttons bellow.
If you are waiting for some great PCB design that will go underneath those buttons, then well... keep waiting. I am still waiting for some parts and I don't want to rush it. I mocked up the keypad part with some universal PCB.
After bit of artistic soldering and slight dissection of my PDA I ended up with updated keypad. After few button presses I found out that seller of the buttons must have mislabeled them, because they sure did not feel like they have operating force of 1 N. They felt better than the previous ones and that is what counts.
In conclusion, feel of the buttons has been improved, but choice of the switches was not great and buttons are a bit too hard to press.
I will post freecad and STL files for the new case when I will be done with it.
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