⚠️ This page is still a work in progress ⚠️
Please start with the original build guide by Josef Adamcik. Please pay attention to the following differences (prefaced by the paragraph name):
- [Bill of materials] Please disregard the BoM. Ours is a bit different and is dependent on the kit version
- [The LEDs] The RGB LED modules are connected a little differently:
- The “indicator bypass” solder jumper only has two pads – if they are bridged, the indicator LED will be skipped and should not be fitted
- Same for the “underglow bypass” solder jumper – when it’s bridged, the chain of 6 underglow modules will be skipped (and they should not be fitted)
- There is no “backlight enable” solder jumper (as it’s not necessary – if you don’t want in-switch lighting, simply don’t fit it)
- ⚠️ There is unfortunately a bug in the V3.2 revision – the connection from the last underglow LED to the first backlight LED is missing. As such,
- Without any modification, either underglow or backlight can be used, but not both at the same time
- To use both underglow and backlight at the same time, a fairly simple jump wire fix is needed. See below.
- [Bridge the oled pads] In addition to the OLED, the Sofle RGB V3.2 also natively supports the nice!view screen. The 5-pin footprint is located directly below the 4-pin OLED footprint. If fitting nice!views, bridge the 4 solder pads below the 5-pin nice!view
- [Components on the front side] In addition to the components mentioned, there’s a SMD power switch that should be fitted if using nice!nano. Add a small amount of solder to the middle pin, put the power switch in place and reheat the solder. Then add a tiny bit of solder to all the remaining pins
- [Pro Micro and displays]
- If using the Frood controller, make sure to align it vertically so that the top two pins (either side of the USB-C socket, labelled D+/D-) are left empty. In other words, bottom 12 pins on each side should be soldered.
- Controllers are usually not soldered directly to the PCB, but using sockets and pins to make them removable
…
RGB connection bug in Sofle RGB V3.2
Unfortunately there’s a connection missing between the last underglow RGB module and the first backlight (in-switch) RGB module in the Sofle RGB V3.2. The missing connection is between the DOUT pin of module 7 (the highlighted one, bottom right on the picture) and the DIN pin of module 8 (bottom left on the picture) as numbered on this picture from the original build guide. To fix this, a small piece of jump wire would have to be soldered between the two pins. Any thin piece of wire would work, but some “magnet wire”, i.e. enamelled copper wire used for winding coils would work best – a bit of the insulation would just need to be scratched off at each end.