Kudos to Roel for the chuck, too!

My brother and I have been building CNC machines for years now, and we used to say "all I have left is the wiring" thinking that we were nearly done. Now we say "all I have left is the wiring" and mean we are only about half way through the job.

Seeing the lacing tape being broken out is XMas for me 🥰

Merry X-mas and thank you for your kind words to all who make your channel thrive one way or another. Cheers!

One smal but major error on your matrix schematic: The switches connect between a row and a column. When wired as shown, a signal can only go to the second row if the button on the first row is pressed simultaneously. Happy Christmas!

Long time since I’ve seen a laced wiring loom 😀

I defiantly would have made a pcb all that wiring would drive me nuts. big thankyou to Roel for the early charismas present:) Merry Christmas to you and your family

Merry Christmas to Mr & Mrs SMP, thanks for all the videos - Heather

Merry Christmas Mark and family, and also to all who watch. May 2024 bring good health and success.

Your videos and the interactions in the comment section are something I look forward to every weekend! Merry Christmas! 🌲

Slept in this week, woot! Merry Christmas. I haven't built a keyboard, but I'll put it on my to do list. I did knock out a bushing, err a ring... as a gift in a few hrs on the lathe. It was great to spend some time on it, However, I did add a bunch items to the todo list by noticing little things to fix. Have a great vacation! ~Mike

wiring it seems never to end. Have a wonder Christmas to you and family

Best channel on KZfaq

Thank you for a great year (well, several years) of thoroughly enjoyable content. Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

I see you acquiesced on the Advent candle holder design 😀 - efficiency is seldom appreciated when fashion is the design driver 😂😂 . Merry Christmas to you Mark 🎄🎄👍🎄🎄

It is now Sunday morning ritual to watch mr rotary, see you next year, merry Xmas

Merry Christmas Mark! Switch and diode testing: 1. Test all the switches once they are installed in the panel. For extra points for the paranoid, test them before installing in the panel too. But a visual inspection for broken or loose parts is usually all that is needed then. You want to test after installing in the panel in case case distortion is going to make the switch fail. 2. Run the wires from the switches and diodes off to the termination area, but don't terminate yet. Bundle and tie loosely, occasionally, and only if absolutely necessary to preserve sanity. These cable ties will come off and be replaced later, so don't sweat them. 3. Once everything is loosely wired, strip the termination ends of the matrix wires, and start testing. Since wires are still loose it is pretty easy to fix any mistakes. 4. Once everything is verified, pretty up and lace the wiring. 5. Make the end terminations to connectors or screw headers or whatever. 6. Double-check that you got the wires in the right place on the end termination. 7. Once the controller is live, run a software check to be sure that everything is correct. It doesn't hurt to do a double-key check on a few selected keys, like joystick down while pressing some other button. Make sure results are as expected. I'm sure you already knew 90% of that, but you did ask... :-)

Hand-laced bundles, nice.

Hi Mark Merry Christmas ! What a great package from Roel ,that chuck will make things so much easier. Since you asked about component testing👹 at my old job we would check every wire ,resistor,switch,motor,etc for its important parameters before use and then check again after soldering ,crimping or whatever we did to it . Of course we were building a nuclear reactor inspection tool, so there certain standards to live up to. A few of my co-workers had worked for P&W ,needless to say they had the same sort of standards as well. There is nothing nicer that tidely done point to point wiring and lacing. PCB's are obvious for volume work , but for one off or custom why bother? Finally thank you for providing us with our Sunday morning entertainment.

Christmas episode nice

Well done Roel I doff my cap to you. Thanks for all your great content this year looking forward to next years projects. As a 71 year old ex sparky you I remember lacing cables in control panels and fault finding was a real pain. I found the point to point wiring of German panels far easier. Happy Christmas Re ken

All the best to you too.

No, thank you! I love your videos. Happy Christmas to you and your family. We'll see you in the new year.

I wouldn't worry about brand new signal diodes not working. As far as semiconductors go, they're extremely simple devices - just as long as you don't manhandle them to the point of breaking the glass they should be fine. A very nice assembly, the only concern about not going the PCB route is potentially vibration cracking the solder joints but you've made nice mechanical connections before soldering so everything should be fine long term. Incidentally, when I was taught to solder by my Grandfather who was a radar tech in the RAAF (and later continued as a civilian contractor to the RAN), I wasn't allowed to put the iron anywhere near the work until the mechanical connection was good. I image he would've been pleased to see the way you've done it!

Oh a little early xmas treat! Happy holidays Mark!

I know a few people who do manual placement of THT components and they don't do testing during manufacturing. They have their diagrams and are simply expected to make no mistakes. At the end of a production stage there may be ICT (In circuit testing) or AOI (advanced optical inspecting) if the customer pays for it. If any errors are spotted, the components go back to be repaired and tested again before shipping.

Season's greetings everyone!

Merry Christmas, I like how even in something that will never fly you tie every wire with string.

Merry Christmas Mark and all the best to you and yours.

Thank you and a merry Christmas to you and your family.

Amestra was a french company, bought later by a german firm. Known also by owning the multi-fix brand toolpost.

Merry Christmas. Thanks for the update. You did make wiring interesting....I definitely learned something with that matrix wiring.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I've enjoyed your videos for years and thank you very very much. Merry Christmas.

I tend to go the PCB Route you depicted, takes only double the time for me personally, someday my OCD is gonna kill me.

Merry Christmas!😊

Merry Christmas Mark! When I worked in an electronics factory making police lights and sirens, we would test after soldering, as some components could be damaged from the heat. We rarely tested as we went, just had a test at the end.

great vid and all the best for the coming year

Suggestion for next year's Christmas ornaments: Have you seen the set of our Solar System Planets? I don't think it comes with a Sun but it has all the Planets, I think screen printed with the actual photographs and an attempt made to make them proportionally sized.

good video RotarySMP Merry Christmas

Have a great Christmas and New Year 👍

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Crazy man just crazy

Merry Christmas

Non-binary candle holder looks nice.

If your interface does not need you to press more than one button at a time, you don't need diodes on every switch. Regular computer keyboards do not have them. You can test this by pressing more and more keys simultaneously: you will find that some combinations allow you to press quite a few before pressing more keys has no effect. Gaming keyboards (as well as other gaming controllers like gamepads) use either an oversized, sparsely populated matrix which is cleverly designed to allow any ten keys to be pressed at once or have diodes.

Merry Xmas and a very Happy New Year to you, I look forward to your 2024 trials and tribulations, and greetings from a somewhat chilly Thailand. 👍

Merry Xmas and a happy new year to you and yours :)

I would test each subassembly on completion particularly if access is limited after final assembly. It's not normal / worthwhile to test new electronic components before fitting since they should be tested by the manufacturer before release. 👍

Merry Christmas mate, thanks for the video. You inspire me to buy a lathe and mill. 😊

As far as testing… run a continuity check after you solder it in. That’s the best I can think of.

I guess you could use the diode test feature on most multimeters as you press each button, the meter should show 0.2-0.3V or 0.5-0.7V depending upon the diode type.

Thank you!

I’d like to also know how the electrical engineers work a circuit board. Once I build a complicated board without testing anything, and it just wouldn’t work. I went over it a bazillion times but no luck 🤦‍♂️. So finally I built a completely new one from scratch.

I an very Disappointed not seeing the 3D taster hahaha 😂 but when you are throwing tool around maybe it’s better to wait 😂 hahah

one more year.Mark and the plate might be clean🤣

That was like brain surgery! And Merry Christmas to you and yours. Ps. Our Christmas is a green one here in Michigan. That's really odd here.....

Hi Mark merry christmas . For a bit of perspective on PCB vs point to point wiring , to this day CNC machines that have proper physical pushbutton switches,dials,etc are point to point wiring. this is on the builder suppled side for e-stop etc. The control builder (fanuc,siemens,heidenhan,meldas,etc) key panels are however, PCB membrane switches with overlaid key caps or soft cover just like a tv remote. So you are in very good company wiring as you are

5:50 yes, me - it's a DIY project. In industrial settings, parallel-to-serial might have been a better choice

Ha, I feel like I've recommended the PCB thing before, but I wouldn't have in this situation ;) you could start milling your own boards though, might be a cool project

Im sure you did it for simplicity, but your circuit diagram for your 3 x 3 matrix keyboard was wrong. It showed that output 1 was wired into one terminal of sw1, and the other terminal of sw1 was then wired on to the first terminal of sw2 and so on. The way you drew it, you would need to hold sw1 on AS WELL as sw2 in order to ever register a press on sw2, because theyre wired in series. In any case, i understood what you meant, but thought Id better mention it. Have a very merry christmas and keep the excellent videos coming.

Awesome video. Merry Christmas

ᎷᎬᎡᎡY ᏟᎻᎡᏆᏚᎢᎷᎪᏚ to you too Mark. 👍👍

As an electronics guy I really don't envy that job! Ouch. And all the matrixed wiring is only part of the job, then you have key mappings and potential issues with double keypresses (ie; hold down one key while you press another). Good luck! (And by the way your hand drawn key matrix diagram is totally wrong, the rows and columns shoukd be contiguous with each key+diode placed diagonally between a row and column, I'm sure you worked that out by this time)

If you need some simple pcb design i have some spare time i wiil be glad to give you an hand. Tanks for your content .

I am sort of missing the point of this. It looks like great wiring but a lot of work. I would have used one of those 'duino boards (e.g. Mega) with lots of input pins and encoded the keyboard into i2c or even USB. Actually, you can buy i2c I/O expanders. Merry Christmas!

Testing as you go is for the weak. Finishing it then debugging is where it's at :)

RotarySMP: Mocking people telling him to spend 5 bucks and an evening to make custom PCBs for the wiring job. Also RotarySMP: spending a month to wire it all by hand and still doesn't get it done.

The full wrath of the electronics community might be upon you with this one 😅🙈

you got to rebuild interface board on your own ... i just give up by this time ... machines from '80 without schematics .... its a days of tracing wires

Computers count from 0 because it's an offset/index from an address.

you a one of... this old tony ... eva ...

If you cannot trust a diode to work, what can you trust...?

Nah. But you have many fans whos dayjob is to make pcb using said software that wiuld have enjoyed the challenge...

I’ve already made a mechanical keyboard I guess I can skip this one ;)

Computers count from zero because that is the way that god intended

You lost me in the matrix part. But no problem, I enjoyed the video anyway :)

You could've paid someone to make the pcb layouts for you.