Hello Geekhack, today I present you theMochi40
Mochi40 (Taro Colourway)
Disclaimer:The Mochi40 is based off of the Whimsy, a board designed by Prkns that was meant to go into group buy around a year ago. After Prkns went silent for almost 4 months, I began to reverse engineer the Whimsy through the renders and the files publicly available on GitHub. After building a small following on the ThisIsFourteen server, I moved to my own server and began to differentiate my project from the Whimsy. Additionally, all the files I have created are publicly available on GitHub under a permissible license to keep with the open source nature of the project: https://github.com/Aidan-OS/Mochi40
Prkns still hasn't directly communicated with his community, however one of his moderators has communicated for him stating that he does not know when he will be able to return to the world of keyboards. As a result I continued to develop the Mochi40.
How does the Mochi40 differentiate itself from the Whimsy? Well, the title of the post gives some of it away, but let's get into it!Case Material and ColoursThe Mochi40 will be made of 6063 aluminum and exclusively treated with Cerakote. There are currently 8 colour options shown below. I am in close contact with my coating shop and have confirmed that all of these colours will be okay to do, provided a minimum order of 10 per colour. If I get very little to no interest on a colour it will be dropped, but other than that all these colours will be run. Additionally, I am in midst of working with the shop to get basic prototype testing of each of the mixed colours on scrap material. 
Taro (Bright Purple + Stormtrooper White mix) Butterfly Tea (It's a Boy Blue)
Liquorice (Blackout Black) Matcha (Mojito Green + Stormtrooper White mix)
Plain (Stormtrooper White) Red Bean (Crimson)
Strawberry (Bazooka Pink) Waterdrop (Ceramic High Gloss Clear)
Plate Materials Currently I am confident in offering FR4, PC, POM, and aluminum plates. I have done work to find a place which will provide brass plates at a reasonable price, however have been out of luck. Brass is still included on the IC, however unless there is a considerable amount of interest in it (and people are willing to pay a premium) I will not be offering brass.PCB & LayoutThe core of the Mochi40 is the fine!40 PCB. There will be two options for the fine!40 rev1, a soldered and a hotswap version.
The soldered version of the PCB will require you to solder everything: the diodes, the microcontroller, the OLED, the rotary encoder, the reset button, and the switches.
The hotswap version will still require you to solder the microcontroller, OLED, the reset button, and Rotary Encoder, but not the diodes and switches.
Below is an image featuring the available layouts on the fine!40 soldered PCB. As for the Hotswap PCB, the only available layout will be L1. I am currently considering switching L1 to be 2.25u + 2.75u, so that is included on the IC.
Mochi40 Layout Options
Microcontrollers, OLEDs, & FirmwareThe fine!40 pcb is capable of functioning with two different microcontrollers, the nice!nano and the Elite-C. I will be providing both as options at group buy time, with the nice!nano being slightly more expensive and including a JST header for your battery. Doing things in this manner allows for me to offer a bluetooth upgrade at as low of a cost as possible.
I will be offering two different sizes of SSD1306 OLED at the time of the group buy, 128x64 and 32x6, both with white lighting.
As for firmware, the Elite-C version will use QMK, while the nice!nano will use ZMK.Purchase OptionsI really wish I could work out a way to make this less complicated of a breakdown, but I just can't. There will be two core purchasing options, the Mochi40 Kit and the fine!40 PCB.
Mochi40 Kit
Required Parts
1 x Aluminum Case (any colour)
1 x fine!40 PCB (Soldered or Hotswap)
1 x Core electronics kit (diodes, rotary encoder, reset button)
1 x Core mounting kit (screws, 50A Silicone o-rings)
1 x OLED (128x64, 128x32)
1 x Microcontroller (Elite-C or nice!nano)
1 x Acrylic Screen Cover
Optional Parts
1 x Plate & Plate Foam (yes this can be built plateless)
1 x JST battery connector (for nice!nano)
fine!40 PCB
Required Parts
1 x fine!40 PCB (Soldered or Hotswap)
1 x Core electronics kit (diodes, rotary encoder, reset button)
1 x Microcontroller (Elite-C or nice!nano)
1 x Core mounting kit (screws, 50A Silicone o-rings)
1 x OLED (128x64, 128x32)
1 x Acrylic Screen Cover
Optional Parts
1 x JST Battery connector
1 x Plastic mounting kit (Threaded inserts for 3D printed cases)
Extra Parts for Individual Purchase
- All plates
- Extra Microcontrollers
- Extra Acrylic Screen Covers
- Extra OLED Screens
- Plate Foam
Vendors and PricingNA: Me (Located in Toronto, Canada)
UK: Protozoa
EU: CandyKeys
AUS: Allcaps
SEA: Hex Keyboards
India: StacksKB
Japan: TBD
Pricing per vendor differs more than just the currency conversion. This is due to the costs associated with vendors. If you are ordering from an area where a vendor sells, you are going to save money on shipping and taxes as a result. I would also like to note that the Cases and Plates for this board are being produced in North America, not China.
Prototype(s)In this day and age you can't really come to GH without a prototype it seems, so I have done so. My first prototype is of a slightly older case design with the only major change being the removal of the center screw post.
The prototype definitely has some issues to address, all of which should be fixed in the second prototype I am currently having made. First, there are some small holes in the bottom of the case as a result of tolerance issues. Second there is clear ringing on some of the outside edges of the case which will not be present in the final versions by adding another finishing pass. Finally, there are two spots where the coating is rough as a result of the hanger rubbing against the board while drying. This will be solved with a custom drying rig for the final product.
One more thing to comment on is the thin coating on bottom inside edges of the case. This is a result of an intentional cost cutting measure that has been done to bring the board out for a lower price. This thinner coating will only be present on the bottom inside of the case (where it is not visible when built).My Thanks to the CommunityI have a large list of people to say thanks to as a result of the fantastic support that I have gotten from many discords. Heck, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the OGs on my discord server who have been helping every step of the way with feedback and design input. They pushed me to turn this into a full project instead of just making a Whimsy for myself. Please note that this list of thanks is in absolutely no order:
Bomtarnes from the QMK Discord
Filterpaper from the QMK Discord
Drashna from the QMK Discord
Dan from RingerKeys
Pete Johanson of ZMK
BraveKarma of the ZMK Discord
Maple Computing of the Elite-C Project
Nick of Nice Keyboards
Ecto of Protozoa
MakerJake
FreshFromTheGrave
JC of Allcaps
David of CandyKeys
Jaspertandy of Fourteen
Prkns of Fourteen
Everyone on the AidanSmith.dev Discord
Interest Check Form
Discord
UpdateIt's unfortunate that it is really difficult to get the entire situation across. I have on multiple occasions spoken with Jaspertandy, the only person on the ThisIsFourteen discord who has had direct communication with Prkns. This is their feelings on the Mochi40 (note that this is from all the way back in January)
I would also like to clarify that I built none of what I currently have off of the source code of the Whimsy. I reverse engineered the case from renders, and I have designed the PCB, and created the firmware for both QMK and ZMK myself.
