See my fork of QMK and the original repo. I’m going to describe how to write a layout, compile it and flash it to the keyboard.
Writing a layout
For this particular keyboard, head to keyboards/massdrop/alt/keymaps/. From there I can just copy any layout (take the mac folder as an example) and change the layout in the file there. I think it’s called keymap.c.
Some useful docs I remember I used for this:
There’s probably a lot more, but with those two it’s possible to implement SpaceFN without problems.
Compiling the firmware
After repo is cloned. Set up the repo:
$ ./util/qmk_install.sh
$ make git-submodule
I believe the last one is critical to have the firmware compile. So don’t forget it.
The following command is used to compile: make <keyboard>:<keymap>/<target>. Sounds a little weird, but in our case, the keyboard is massdrop, our keymap is alt and the target is my custom layout: anachronic.
make massdrop:alt/anachronic
This should generate a file called massdrop_alt_anachronic.bin. This file can be flashed to the keyboard.
The regular make clean also works.
Flashing to the keyboard
In order to flash the compiled firmware, we use mdloader, I believe it’s maintained by Massdrop. The instructions are there.
- Get mdloader_mac or the one for w/e you are using. Chmod +x it. Don’t forget the applet file
apple-mdflash.bin. - If on Mac, we might need to right click and manually open the file to skip apple’s notarization
- Run
mdloader_mac --first --download <compiled_firmware> --restart - Hold
Fn + bfor 5 secs or so and we should be good to go. Keyboard will shut lights off and restart. This key corresponds toMD_BOOTin the layout.
I believe there’s a restart button on the back of the keyboard in case of unexpected errors.