Once [Hide-key] saw the likes of the banana and corn macro pads, they knew they had to throw their hat in this strange and wonderful ring. Some family members suggested a sunflower, and off they went looking for inspiring images, finally settling on a more iconic and less realistic design which we think is quite beautiful.
This lovely little macro pad has seven keys hiding under those petals, with the eighth major petal concealing a XIAO RP2040 microcontroller. The rest of the major petals actuate a low-profile Kailh choc in — what else? — brown. Don’t worry, the middle isn’t a wasteland — there’s a low-profile rotary encoder underneath. Part of the reason this flower looks so great is that [Hide-key] started with SLA prints, but the paint choices are aces as well. If you’d like to grow your own sunflower, everything about this garden is open-source.
Oh yes, we totally covered the banana and the banana split, though we must have missed out on the corn. We hear that when you try it with butter, everything changes.
Via KBD #109
Fantastic! Adding little bits of whimsy to your daily grind/life is such an under-rated way of helping your mental health.
Not just for [Hide-key], but for us as well… I should have skipped looking at the news and come straight to Hackaday.
Hide-key has made more macropads that are not featured on HaD, but available on his reddit and github. It’s cool to see how he went from assembling keyboards 6 months ago to now creating several original macropads featured on kbd.news.