Built my first keyboard + review BM80 ISO Krepublic hostwap kit
Close up, the N letter is a bit lower than the others
Between today and yesterday I built my first mechanical keyboard. I chose the BM80 ISO 80% kit from Krepublic (hotswappable) being one of the few ISO PCBs I could find (apart from the Glorious, which was a little too expensive). Worst thing to find were the keycaps, I was looking for ISO Italian keycaps, because I didn't want to transition to the ANSI layout so my choices were very limited. I decided to stay settle with the Keychron keycaps ISO-IT (there are three possible palettes) in this fantastic vintage palette.
Build and firmware
A lot of build errors, bent pins and broken (then repaired) switches and stems later, now it is working perfectly. I am getting used to it and adding some layers from the QMK configurator, which took about four hours to understand. In the end it was quite simple, I just had to set my "host keyboard language" to Italian and the configurator filled the right accents and keys automatically. In the QMK firmware included in its library there is also a RGB layer to change the LED, which are addressable and supero cool, I decided to put this very faded purple, seeing that I bought keycaps with non-transparent letters (facepalm).
Overall I think that the build is quite simple for a new user, I only watched a video of another dude building the same kit, just to know in which order assemble the pieces, the rest is just solving problems and using tools (I used a screwdriver to pull switches and eyebrows tweezers).
The keycaps set came with a right shift key too short for my build and without stabilizer stems, so I have just unused stabilizers under there, I will soon buy another right shift.
Even though it not perfect, the feeling of using something I have built is insane, just a shame that this kind of passion is not developed in Italy and EU countries as it is in the US, it would have been easier to find all the pieces.
