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.
![](https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/4898901518644081399.png)
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.
![](https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/2224521518645125367.png)
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.
![](https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/2215971518645378788.jpg)
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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