Building a keyboard with rotary dial

Note: This page will be updated as I advance this project

As you may have noticed, Christmas are around the corner, and I am not gonna lie, getting presents is not one of my strengths. I was really struggling to come up with a gift for my father. That was, until my mom said something along the lines "It's a shame that it's too late for you to make him that keyboard with rotary dial".

*eurobeat starts playing in the distance*

What

Last year I stumbled upon this thing on tumblr, I think, does not matter. What matters is that my mom ended up seeing it and thought that it would be a great gift for my dad. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it in time for last Christmas, nor for his birthday in April, since I had my university finals. I completely forgot about it after that. Until last weekend.

I think my dad could appreciate it. It may not be the most practical gift ever, but he might find it amusing. He worked for various telephone companies all his life.

So what's the plan

I'm building a mechanical keyboard from scratch. I'm 3D printing the body, using this model as a base. I'm modifying the model in a few ways. I don't have hot swap sockets, so I'm cutting most of the middle layer to make room for handwiring. I'm completely remodelling the numpad. Getting rid of all the switches and making a big hole for rotary dial.

Speaking of rotary dial, I found a way to connect it to a computer using arduino. However, I do not have enough time to make it work with QMK, that I'm using for the firmware part of the project. So the plan is, and I am aware how horrible this solution is, to get a cheap USB hub, and connect both Pro Micro running the keyboard firmware and the arduino nano reading the inputs from the dial. Then I'll solder a USB cable straight to the hub, since the one I got for this project has really short cable.

Project report: 16-DEC-24

I started printing the top parts. Got both parts of the top plate. Luckily I had some spare switches laying around (Yenkee by DUROCK JWK T1 Teal tactile 67g) and one set of keycaps with czech legends - I took the off the keyboard I built for my sister. I already had some spare Pro micros and one Arduino nano, but I might look around for another one, since this has soldered pins and I am too lazy to desolder all of it. I got rotary dial from my mom, since dad had one laying around in their bedroom (?) and mom asked if she can keep it. I got connectors compatible with the ones already on the dial, in case my dad decides he needs his dial back I don't want to damage the original leads.
Yesterday I started modelling the top part of my numpad. I eyeballed most of it, and pretty well if I say so myself, but run out of free time. I want to move things a bit today, I really want to have most of the numpad module printed this evening.
It is going to be a bit challenging, since my eyeball engineering worked pretty well for the irregular shape of the bottom housing of the dial, but it is a couple degrees tilted as well, and I completely messed that up yesterday. I printed several prototypes and none of them has the right tilt.