Category: ANAVI Macro Pad 10

Improving the Firmware of ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3 and ANAVI Knob 1

There are two different options for mechanical keyboard open source firmware for ANAVI Macro Pad 10, Knobs 3, and Knob 1: KMK and QMK. Both of which have been getting upgrades recently!

KMK is a feature-rich and beginner-friendly open source firmware for mechanical keyboards, written in CircuitPython, which comes preloaded on the Macro Pad 10 and Knobs 1 and 3. The source code is available on GitHub under the GPLv3 license. So… if you have code suggestions to make it better, just open a GitHub pull request. This is exactly what Stefan Misch recently did, by improving the encoder resolution.

ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3 and ANAVI Knob 1

Huge thanks to Stefan for his valuable contribution to the upstream of KMK! If you own Macro Pad 10, Knobs 3, and Knob 1, please consider upgrading the KMK firmware on your mini mechanical keyboard to get his fix.

In other news: the GitHub pull request that adds support for ANAVI Knobs 3 was finally merged in QMK! QMK stands for Quantum Mechanical Keyboard. It is probably the most popular firmware for mechanical keyboards and supports literally hundreds of devices, including ANAVI Macro Pad 8 and our other mechanical keyboards. The source code is available under GPLv2 license and written in C. Initial support for the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller in QMK was added in September 2022. We started the porting efforts in October, and shortly after that, patches for ANAVI Macro Pad 10 and Knob 1 were merged. However, it took almost 6 months to merge the GitHub pull request for ANAVI Knobs 3. The long wait is over: now all of our mini mechanical keyboards are supported by QMK!

ANAVI Knobs 3

The community is very important and makes all the difference in any open source project. Thank you for supporting and improving our open source hardware mechanical keyboards!

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Macro Pad 10, Knobs 3 and Knob 1 are OSHWA-Certified!

Great news! The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has officially certified ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3 and ANAVI Knob 1. OSHWA is a non-profit entity registered in the US that organizes the annual Open Hardware Summit and maintains the Certified Projects Directory.

ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3, ANAVI Knob 1
ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3, ANAVI Knob 1

As part of the certification program, OSHWA ensures that the definition of “open source hardware” used by a specific project (in our case in these 3 mini mechanical keyboards) matches the community’s definition of open source hardware. They provide a unique identification number (UID) for each version of the certified open hardware device based on the country code and a number. So now we have:

The prefix BG is the country code for Bulgaria, because all these mini mechanical keyboards are made in my hometown of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. As truly and entirely open source projects, we also go one step further. Only free and open source software has been used to design the printed circuit board, the stickers, the firmware, and the documentation. In previous updates we explained how we use KiCad for designing the printed circuit boards and the open source firmware QMK and KMK written in CircuitPython.

ANAVI Macro Pad 10
ANAVI Macro Pad 10

One more thing: this year’s open source hardware summit will be held in New York on April 28 and 29th. You can attend remotely and in person. So make sure to mark the dates on your calendar!

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ANAVI Macro Pad 10 & Knobs are Funded!

The launch of our crowdfunding campaign was a blast! ANAVI Macro Pad 10, ANAVI Knobs 3, and ANAVI Knob 1 were all fully funded and all stretch goals were met in the first week. Thanks to all backers and Crowd Supply for bringing life to these three entirely open source projects!

As part of the covered stretch goals, each kit will include stickers from ANAVI Technology and KiCad, the free and open source CAD software used for designing the printed circuit boards of the keyboards. Furthermore, ANAVI Macro Pad 10 kits will include 32 super-cool emoji stickers. You can stick them on the top or sides of the translucent keycaps. Last but not least, we’ll be publishing various video tutorials to ensure getting started is easy.

One more thing… Recently, our mini mechanical keyboards were featured in an article by CNX Software. This is a very popular website with news and tutorials about embedded systems, makers, and open source hardware. It was started in 2010 by Jean-Luc Aufranc. By the way it is worth keep an eye on CNX Software because there are always news about interesting gadgets!

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