by on September 1, 2018
A few days ago I finally received my Planck keyboard by OLKB. It is a mechanical keyboard you usually have to assemble by yourself and moreover have the possibility to program the layout by yourself too.
The firmware that is used is called QMK and is open-sourced (here on github). In order to customize the keyboard layout you have to modify the default keymap, compile the firmware and finally flash it onto your keyboard.
Although the QMK project is pretty well-documented, there are no build or setup instructions for the Gentoo distribution at all. Let’s go through these few steps together:
First you have to make sure your gcc is installed with multilib support:
Now you can install crossdev:
Install the AVR compiler toolchain after that:
The remaining build toolchain dependencies can be easily installed via portage:
Now you are ready to create your customized firmware in no time.
$ git clone https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware.git
$ cd qmk_firmware
# choose the correct keyboard type ('planck' for me)
$ cd keyboards/planck/keymaps
# create your own keymap (e.g. your github user name)
$ cp -a default kongo2002
$ cd kongo2002
# now edit the keymap.c to your liking
# vim keymap.c
# once finished you can build the firmware
$ cd ../../..
$ make planck/rev5:kongo2002
# flash the firmware onto your keyboard
# using the dfu tools we installed earlier
$ make planck/rev5:kongo2002:dfu