ATMegaKeyboard.md

ATMegaKeyboard

A lot of custom keyboards are built upon the ATMega MCU (most often an atmega32u4), and the vast majority of them follow a similar architecture, so much so that the vast majority of code can be lifted out into a base class, making porting to these keyboards trivial. All we have to do is tell it our pinout, and we're all done.

Porting hardware using the ATMegaKeyboard class

The plugin assumes a simple matrix layout, which we can tell it by using the ATMEGA_KEYBOARD_CONFIG macro, which takes two arguments: a list of row and column pins. In the .cpp, simply use ATMEGA_KEYBOARD_DATA, with the hardware object as its argument:

// Kaleidoscope-Vendor-ExampleHardware.h
#define KALEIDOSCOPE_WITH_ATMEGA_KEYBOARD 1
#include "kaleidoscope/hardware/vendor/ExampleHardware.h"

// kaleidoscope/hardware/vendor/ExampleHardware.h
namespace kaleidoscope {
namespace hardware {
namespace vendor {
class ExampleKeyboard: public ATMegaKeyboard {
 public:
  ExampleKeyboard() {}

  ATMEGA_KEYBOARD_CONFIG(
    ROW_PIN_LIST({PIN_D1, PIN_D2}),
    COL_PIN_LIST({PIN_F6, PIN_F7})
  );

  static constexpr int8_t led_count = 0;
};

#define KEYMAP(  \
   r0c0 ,r0c1    \
  ,r1c0 ,r1c1    \
)                \
 { r0c0 ,r0c1 }, \
 { r1c0 ,r1c1 }

}
}
}

// kaleidoscope/hardware/vendor/ExampleHardware.cpp
namespace kaleidoscope {
namespace hardware {
namespace vendor {

ATMEGA_KEYBOARD_DATA(ExampleHardware);
constexpr int8_t ExampleHardware::led_count;

}
}
}

HARDWARE_IMPLEMENTATION KeyboardHardware;
kaleidoscope::hardware::vendor::ExampleHardware &ExampleHardware = KeyboardHardware;

Overriding methods

For performance and space-saving reasons, the base class does not use virtual methods. Instead, whenever it calls a method of its own, it will call it through the KeyboardHardware singleton object, which is always an instance of the exact hardware plugin. Thus, implementing a function in the subclass will shadow the one in the base class.

This can be used to implement more efficient methods, would it be needed. The Atreus port does this, for example, by overriding the generic readCols with a more specialised, faster implementation.

Further reading

See the Planck and Atreus ports for an example of how this class can be used in practice.