Recently I picked up a Zeal 60 printed circuit board from BC-based ZealPC, and I couldn’t be happier!
The board supports a few layouts for now, though it’s open source, and you can either fork it to add your own, or add a pull request to share with the community.
The first thing you’ll want to do after getting a Zeal60 PCB is to flash it with the “default.hex” file. I used Windows for this, though you can achieve similar results on Linux and MacOS (OSX).
Initial Downloads
- Download Java Runtime Environment (JRE) here:Â http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html
- Download the Atmel flashing utility “FLIP”:Â http://www.atmel.com/tools/flip.aspx
- Grab the most recent Zeal 60 keyboard zip:Â https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/files/zeal60_v0_3.zip
- Unzip the zeal60_v0_3.zip file to your desktop
Install the Driver
- Plug in your Zeal60 to your computer via USB
- Hit “Windows” and “r” keys together, then type “devmgmt.msc”
- Right click the device with the exclamation point next to it
- Click “browse for driver”
- Navigate to C:\Program Files\FLIP\Drivers
- Hit “next”
Flashing the Board
- Install the driver –
- If you’ve not started assembling anything yet, press the golden button between the “A” and “S” pads on the board (if you’ve already assembled it, unplug it and hold the “space” and “esc” keys while plugging in the USB cable)
- Open FLIP
- In FLIP, hit connect to the device, and select “ATMega32U4”
- Hit “ctrl” + “U” keys to connect to the Zeal 60 PCB
- Hit “ctrl” + “L” to load a file
- Select the “default.hex” file in the Zeal 60 folder you extracted to your desktop
- On the left-hand window, click “Run”
- Once completed, then click “Start Application” in the right window
You’re all set!