Keychron C3 Pro Keyboard: Taming

Having set the Moonlander to use Auto Shift, I’ve come to depend on it, so I got a Keychron C3 Pro keyboard for one of the Basement Shop’s PCs because it glows in the dark and can be configured with QMK:

The default setup has rainbow hues cycling across the keyboard, which I find entirely too distracting. Although you can manually select the solid-color variant from the myriad possibilities using the keyboard, I forced a solid color with this config.h file:

#define RGB_MATRIX_DEFAULT_ON true // Sets the default enabled state, if none has been set
#define RGB_MATRIX_DEFAULT_MODE RGB_MATRIX_SOLID_COLOR // Sets the default mode, if none has been set
#define RGB_MATRIX_DEFAULT_HUE 36  // Sets the default hue value, if none has been set
#define RGB_MATRIX_DEFAULT_SAT 255 // Sets the default saturation value, if none has been set
#define RGB_MATRIX_DEFAULT_VAL 255 // Sets the default brightness value, if none has been set

Enabling Auto Shift requires this rules.mk file:

AUTO_SHIFT_ENABLE = yes

Both of those go in the keymap directory defining the keyboard mapping for my custom setup:

qmk_firmware/keyboards/keychron/c3_pro/ansi/rgb/keymaps/ednisley

The keymap.c file remains unchanged, although I’m mildly tempted to toss the Mac layouts overboard.

For the record, setting QMK to compile that keyboard configuration goes like this:

qmk setup -H /base_directory/…/qmk_firmware
<snippage>
qmk new-keymap -kb keychron/c3_pro/ansi/rgb -km ednisley
qmk config user.keyboard=keychron/c3_pro/ansi/rgb user.keymap=ednisley
qmk compile
qmk flash

Flashing the keyboard firmware goes like this:

• Run qmk flash
• Unplug the USB cable
• Hold down the Esc key
• Plug in the USB cable
• Release the Esc key

I should boot the Atreus configuration into the current decade, but that’s for later.