WABBLE-60: 5x12 Ortholinear, BLE, RISC-V-powered Adaptation of peej's Lumberjack PCB
A keyboard using the WeAct BLE core board.
WeAct's BLE core board is significantly cheaper than the more popular nice!nano BLE board.
The PCB design resembles peej's lumberjack-keyboard, and mounts into GH-60 compatible cases like the Lumberjack; however, the WeAct BLE core board uses a much more powerful MCU than the Lumberjack's 8-bit ATMega328P.
The WABBLE-60 PCB includes LiPo charging.
Design goals:
- Using WeAct BLE core board. (BLE! RISC-V-powered!).
- Adapt the Lumberjack design.
- In a "show the components" style.
- Fits in tray-mount GH60 case.
- (Relatively) easy to solder.
Pictures:
WABBLE-60.
2D Renders of the PCB, revision rev2024.2
Build Guides and Release Assets
Firmware
There are few options for keyboard firmware for the WeAct BLE core board;
and what options there exist are not very mature.
There is a port of QMK to the CH582,
but as far as I'm aware, it's USB-only, and its BLE-implementation is not
public.
I wrote about my experience writing firmware with this port.
I've put the code for the WABBLE-60 in my qmk_port_ch5xx fork.
Kirei, from the same author as fak supports the CH58x.
I recorded a video demonstrating 110 WPM using a BLE connection.
Though, at the time of writing, Kirei's BLE implementation is not yet mature;
I've had trouble using the BLE keyboard on some platforms.
Like fak, Kirei's keymaps are declared in Nickel.
Kirei's keymap language is more expressive than fak's.
Here's an example of a non-trivial keymap written for Kirei.
I've put the code for the WABBLE-60 in my kirei fork.
Besides these options, ch32-rs has a work-in-progress HAL for CH58x. Its examples include a bare-bones BLE Peripheral.
WCH's EVT has many examples for the CH58x (including USB HID Keyboard, USB+BLE, BLE HID, BLE Central+Peripheral, BLE OTA
IAP).
WeAct also have a BLE core board which uses CH592. However, the CH592 has even less support than the CH58x.