I Made a Million Dollar Product from My Dorm Room

This post shares the story of the nice!nano; a wireless, Pro Micro-compatible microcontroller board I made in my freshman year of college. The nice!nano powers tens of thousands of keyboards, has inspired many, and changed my life.

Over my first winter break in college, I created what I called the Dissatisfaction65, a wireless 65% keyboard inspired by the Satisfaction75. I don’t remember exactly why, but I wanted to try making a DIY wireless keyboard after having made a few wired ones. The Adafruit 32u4 Bluefruit LE microcontroller was used to accomplish wireless since the open-source QMK keyboard firmware supported Bluetooth with this specific board. The project looked great in the end, but its performance was awful. The typing latency was nearly unusable, and it only lasted a few days on battery even with a huge battery inside.