#AdafruitLearningSystem Weekly Update: Keypad Edition

This week on the Adafruit Learning System, we published a few new fun guides, and updated a couple others. Learn all about the new Adafruit Macropad RP2040, Build a Kitty Tow Bean Keypad with a TFT, Learn about Keypad and Matrix Scanning in CircuitPython, and more!

All The Keypads

This week we published a few new keypad designs, including my personal favorite, the Kitty Bean keypad with a Color TFT. We now have a whole bunch of fun keypad designs to build or use as inspiration for your own projects. Here are some other Keypad guides on the Adafruit Learning System:

Favorite New Guide

This weeks favorite new guide is by Tim C and shows us how to make a CircuitPython Rotary Trinkey Brightness Crank

This device will help encourage you to spend less time with social media or tech devices. It will turn the brightness of your device down as long as you aren’t cranking the rotary encoder arm. You must continue cranking in order to raise and keep the brightness level up.

This is a good project to show how you can use CircuitPython and HID to interact with mobile devices without having to write an app!

ALS Deep Cut

With so many guides on the Adafruit Learning System, some amazing guides of years past get buried and lost. ALS Deep Cuts brings these guides back up to the surface. This week’s guide is from back in 2016.

The Ruiz Brothers were showing us how to make cool keypads way back in 2016

In this tutorial, we’ll build a custom PCB for Cherry MX switches and the Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE to make a custom gamepad. We’ll design and 3D print an enclosure and custom keycaps. This project is great for casual gaming, or creating custom controllers for various applications.


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