<metaproperty="og:description"content="So you want to create your own membrane keypad? Why? well making your own keypad can be useful for many reasons. It’s cheap and easy to…">
<metaname="twitter:title"content="Create Own Membrane Matrix Keypad (and Hooking It Up to the Arduino)">
<metaname="twitter:description"content="So you want to create your own membrane keypad? Why? well making your own keypad can be useful for many reasons. It’s cheap and easy to…">
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<h1id="Step-4-Mapping-Out-Your-Cheap-Matrix"><ahref="#Step-4-Mapping-Out-Your-Cheap-Matrix"class="headerlink"title="Step 4: Mapping Out Your Cheap Matrix"></a>Step 4: Mapping Out Your Cheap Matrix</h1><p>What we are going to be doing is gluing on foil to make a flexible, cheap, however effective circuit board. What we need to do now is on our computer mock up we need to make how our columns and rows are going to be set-up. If you are using Photoshop make 2 new layers, one called rows the other columns. if you’re just using paint make a copy of the file called rows and another columns.</p>
<p>On these new layers we will put large black lines where we want our “Circuits” to go. See image 2 for rows and image 3 columns if you are confused. Image 4 shows what both layers turned on looks like. Starting to look familiar?<br>Now you need to flip one of your images vertically… or is it horizontally… see image 5 you’ll get what I mean.</p>
<p>Go ahead and print these out for the next step.</p>
<h1id="Step-5-Faux-Circuit-Making-Time"><ahref="#Step-5-Faux-Circuit-Making-Time"class="headerlink"title="Step 5: Faux Circuit Making Time!"></a>Step 5: Faux Circuit Making Time!</h1><p><imgsrc="images/matrix/realhoriz.jpg"alt="horizontal foil"><br><imgsrc="images/matrix/realboth.jpg"alt="both foil pieces ready to be joined"></p>
<h1id="Step-5-Faux-Circuit-Making-Time"><ahref="#Step-5-Faux-Circuit-Making-Time"class="headerlink"title="Step 5: Faux Circuit Making Time!"></a>Step 5: Faux Circuit Making Time!</h1><p><imgsrc="/images/matrix/realhoriz.jpg"alt="horizontal foil"><br><imgsrc="/images/matrix/realboth.jpg"alt="both foil pieces ready to be joined"></p>
<p>Here is the fun part… well in my opinion the whole thing is fun but whatever…<br>Now that you have your printed out templates you can start making your circuit. Now is the time to glue down your foil where ever your rows and columns are supposed to go. Look at figure 2 for both of my circuits, yours should look somewhat like this. Also, notice how my leads go away from the keypad in an organized way to facilitate easy hook-up? Just like I planned!</p>
<p><strong>NOTE</strong> At this point its a good idea to re-make your front design to include labels for the hookup at the end of the leads with the labels<br>R1<br>R2<br>R3<br>C3<br>C2<br>C1</p>
<p>This is just going to make it easier for you.</p>
<h1id="Step-6-Putting-It-All-Together"><ahref="#Step-6-Putting-It-All-Together"class="headerlink"title="Step 6: Putting It All Together."></a>Step 6: Putting It All Together.</h1><p><imgsrc="images/matrix/padded.jpg"alt=""><br><imgsrc="images/matrix/joined.jpg"alt=""><br><imgsrc="images/matrix/finished.jpg"alt=""></p>
<h1id="Step-6-Putting-It-All-Together"><ahref="#Step-6-Putting-It-All-Together"class="headerlink"title="Step 6: Putting It All Together."></a>Step 6: Putting It All Together.</h1><p><imgsrc="/images/matrix/padded.jpg"alt=""><br><imgsrc="/images/matrix/joined.jpg"alt=""><br><imgsrc="/images/matrix/finished.jpg"alt=""></p>
<p>In the next step we will be putting it all together. Take your spacers and apply them to one side of your keypad. come to think of it you could technically use silicone (the type used for caulking) as a really decent spacer… I may try this in the future actually…. hmm..</p>
<p>Anyways back on topic. To apply these spacers we need to make sure that there is a hole in the center of them so that the rows and columns can contact one another when they are depressed (not sad… pressed down). I kinda just tiled everything but you could use a hole punch or something to get better results. The spacers are also there to make sure other parts of our circuit do not touch each-other incidentally.</p>
<p>Take a look at image 1 to see all the spacers applied appropriately. Once your spacers have been applied (you may need to glue whatever you are using) you may put the other side of your keypad on top of this one (image 2). Luckily you made sure that everything was mapped out properly on your template on the computer… you did make a template didn’t you?</p>
