What is it?

A mechanical plate for the Adafruit NeoKey 1x4 to make the keys less prone to tilting and to prevent accidental removal.

This product is just a mechanical PCB with 4 square holes in it. No key switches or functional board included.

The "Screw Kit" option includes 2 10mm M2.5 button-head hex screws and nuts, which seem to hold the board securely. Note that the screws do poke slightly past the nut on the back of the board.

Why did you make it?

Adafruit does not currently have a mechanical plate for their NeoKey 1x4. Without a mechanical plate (or without gluing the switches in place) the key switches are very prone to tipping or accidental removal. A mechanical plate minimizes or prevents this — the keys can still tip on the long axis but you need to try.

I did include the mechanical holes in the correct positions so adding 2 or 4 M2.5 screws/bolts (at least 9mm long with an approx 4.5mm head size) and nuts will make for very secure key switches without the need for glue.

I took the Eagle board file provided for the NeoKey 1x4, imported it into KiCad, removed everything besides the 4 keys from the board, and replaced the key footprints with correctly-sized holes.

While I did not design the original board, I did modify the Adafruit files to have 4 square cutouts instead of a functional board.