2019-01-18 --> Revised BOM OK. Enter on the schematic page, select BOM button on the top menu bar and Order LCSC components from that window.

Change Notes for revision v1.1:

• Resolved GND unconnected tracks/planes.
• Improved GND Layout and placed GND plane only on the bottom layer. Removed coper fingers with polygon cutouts.
• Rerouted some tracks.
• Moved down USB connector and varistors. Upper varistor was to close to C7 and was difficult to solder.
• Included a Pull-Up missing on RE3.
• Removed unnecessary Pull-Up resistor on RB7 (P2_LEFT) - Uses internal Pull-Up from PORTB.

Make an arcade machine keyboard encoder using a PIC microcontroller.

This project arose from the idea of having a cheaper solution for encoding switches and buttons than existing commercial ones since I was trying to make an arcade cabinet as cheap as possible. So, I wanted to do a quick personal project to practice PCB design and microcontroller programming.

Keyboard encoders are used to transform pushbutton/switch clicks/actions into keyboard presses. That is, whenever a button is pressed a key (ASCII code) will be sent to the PC via USB interface, if USB is used for communication with PC.

The microcontroller will be emulating a HID USB Keyboard, so no special driver is needed on the PC side, because HID Keyboard driver is already present on every Operating System.

When the USB cable coming from the uC is connected to the PC, OS will detect it as a keyboard and you could check this by opening Device manager in your OS.