Microcontroller board discussion

[bonnee]

We have a few options in terms of control boards. Most of them are based on the Nordic nRF52840 which has the following Pros:

• Bluetooth 5.0 Support
• USB HID support
• Possibility of running a single μC for everything, which reduces consumption

The main con is the missing support in mainline qmk, but an out of tree branch is currently being developed.

The following boards have the above features unless stated otherwise:

1. nRFMicro
   • Pros:
     • Pro-Micro compatible
     • Li-Po charger on board
     • Open Source
   • Cons:
     • Need to assemble it
     • Design still in developement
2. BLE-Micro-Pro
   • Pros:
     • Pro-Micro compatible
     • Li-Po charger on board
     • Pre-assembled boards available
     • Made by the same guy that maintains the nrf52 qmk branch
   • Cons:
     • Ships from japan
     • Closed source Gerbers
3. Nice!nano
   • Pros:
     • Single-sided design (-cost, -size)
     • More GPIOs
     • Starting a goup buy at 22$
   • Cons:
     • Closed source
     • Still in developement
4. Adafruit ItsyBitsy
   • Pros:
     • Made by a well-known manufacturer
     • Preassembled version available
     • Many GPIOs
     • Li-Po addon available
   • Cons:
     • Not Pro-Micro compatible
     • Bigger
     • No Li-Po charger onboard
     • Kinda expensive at $17.95
5. Adafruit Feather nRF52840
   • Pros:
     • Made by a well-known manufacturer
     • Preassembled version available
     • Li-Po charger on board
     • Many GPIOs
     • Open Source
   • Cons:
     • Not Pro-Micro compatible
     • Huge
     • Not tested with qmk
     • $25
6. nrfMicro V2
   • Pros:
     • Fork of nRFMicro, so same basic features
     • Improved battery management
   • Cons:
     • The same as nRFMicro

Boards with two μCs are excluded from this list because of bad latency issues. They are supported in mainline qmk though. Check joric's wiki for more details