Open micro sister

Open Micro

Open Micro is an original open-source 96 × 96 mm desktop programming controller. Its industrial stack uses a CNC 6061-T6 aluminum bottom, a continuous neutral-frosted polycarbonate light-carrying wall, and a matte-black control PCB as the exposed structural top. A lower sister PCB carries the MCU, power, USB, RF, and eight hidden wall emitters.

This repository describes an unqualified two-board first article. Automated source, protocol, host, firmware, fabrication, CAD, collision, and artifact checks are design evidence only. No fabricated unit has completed docs/qualification.md; do not represent the design as production-qualified.

Features

• EBYTE E73-2G4M08S1C nRF52840 module; USB keyboard/vendor HID and encrypted bonded BLE keyboard/custom GATT.
• Twelve five-pin PCB-mount MX switches with underside hot-swap sockets, one push encoder, and one exposed capacitive touch control.
• Encoder CCW/CW/press IDs 13–15; consumer volume down/up/mute fallback with no subscribed host; five-second encoder power-up hold clears BLE bonds.
• Thirteen logical reverse-mount RGB channels plus eight hidden inward-facing perimeter emitters: twenty-one physical emitters, thirteen host-addressable channels.
• Plate-free 96 × 96 mm matte-black top PCB and 91 × 91 mm courtyard-derived sister PCB joined by a 24-position Hirose DF40 connector.
• CNC dark-clear-anodized aluminum bottom, removable neutral-frosted wall, 17.0 mm pre-keycap stack, and vendor-made uniform-profile dark PBT keycaps.
• Device protocol 1.1 with exact control IDs 0–15; strict Rust daemon, CLI, simulator, and generated IPC validators.
• OMP extension mapping lifecycle states to agent lights and encoder rotation to selected-session thinking level. No hardware prompt-injection path.
• Deterministic dual-board KiCad fabrication exports, CadQuery STEP/GLB/3MF exports, collision/clearance reports, and SHA-256 manifests.

Start without hardware

Build the host tools, then run the simulator and daemon in separate terminals:

cd host
cargo build --locked --workspace
./target/debug/open-micro-sim

cd host
./target/debug/open-microd --transport sim
./target/debug/open-microctl doctor
./target/debug/open-microctl led set agent-1 --effect breathe --primary '#4D8DFF' --period 1400 --ttl 15

The simulator device endpoint is 127.0.0.1:47950; its control endpoint is 127.0.0.1:47951. The daemon creates a private local socket at $TMPDIR/open-micro-$UID.sock on macOS, $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/open-micro.sock on Linux when available, and \\.\pipe\open-micro on Windows.

Generate and check

python3 protocol/generate.py --check
python3 hardware/generate.py --check
python3 hardware/check.py
python3 firmware/check.py
cargo test --manifest-path host/Cargo.toml --workspace

python3 hardware/export.py --output hardware/generated/fabrication-release
.venv-cad/bin/python mechanical/export.py --output mechanical/generated

The hardware export contains independent top/ and sister/ manufacturing jobs. The mechanical export contains aluminum-bottom and frosted-wall production solids, two PCB envelopes, vendor keycap fit references, a validated full assembly, GLB/3MF, and 2200 × 1600 hero/cutaway renders. Vendor keycap references are not printable production keycaps.

Repository map

Documentation

1. docs/assembly.md — dual-board ordering, vendor keycaps, and plate-free physical assembly.
2. docs/flashing.md — initial SWD recovery, UF2 updates, ZMK, pairing, and encoder bond recovery.
3. docs/setup.md — daemon, CLI, simulator, platform permissions, and OMP installation.
4. docs/sdk.md — local IPC and raw protocol 1.1 contracts.
5. docs/inspection.md — electrical, optical, mechanical, RF, and control inspection.
6. docs/qualification.md — explicitly unperformed first-article evidence gate.

Canonical identity

The first article uses provisional USB identity 0x1209:0x4D50, device protocol 1.1, vendor HID report ID 5, and BLE name Open Micro. The VID/PID is not an assigned production identity. Obtain an appropriate assignment before distribution and change only the canonical protocol manifest before regenerating every consumer.

Licenses

Hardware and mechanical sources: CERN-OHL-S-2.0. Software: Apache-2.0. Documentation: CC-BY-4.0. Third-party notices remain under LICENSES/ and generated release notices. See LICENSE, NOTICE, and REUSE.toml.