The SteamVan was developed as a MiniVan-compatible PCB based on an STM32MCU. It does not support hot swap sockets, and it is designed such that the switches are oriented such that the LEDs are South-facing.
The SteamVan aims to meet the following design goals:
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Switches oriented such that the LEDs are South-facing, for compatibility with Cherry profile keycaps.
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USB Type-C support in both A to C and C to C configurations.
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QMK support.
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ESD protection circuitry, including data line protection and a polyfuse on the VCC line.
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Support for per-switch LED backlighting.
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Fits in MiniVan keyboard cases (tested with R3 MiniVan case only)
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RGB LED underglow support.
The SteamVan supports the same layout options as the MiniVan.
This repository contains several submodules, which in turn contain KiCad libraries used in the PCB design. In order to clone the SteamVan repository, and all of the library submodules, the following command must be issued,
git clone --recursive https://github.com/jmdaly/steamvan.git
This project would not have been possible without all of the awesome work put in by Evan Sailer of thevankeyboards.com. I own an R3 MiniVan and I love it. I really like PCBs that have South-facing LEDs, USB-C connectors, and STM32 microcontrollers. As a result, I took on this project so that I could continue to use the MiniVan layout, as well as my MiniVan case and keycaps, but have some of the features that are important to me in a keyboard. I hope this work is useful to other people.
There is an active keyboard design community on the MechKeys discord. The users there have been very helpful, and I've learned a significant amount about PCB design from them.