Today my ten NeoPixels arrived in the mail, and I soldered my first surface mount parts onto the Haunted Keyboard. I am happy to report that as of tonight, all six of the NeoPixels on the board work! What I learned is that surface mount parts are delicate. I put the first NeoPixel on in the wrong orientation and I had to desolder it and try again, and in the process I yanked one of the pads on the board right off. Nothing a jumper wire from my sweetie @Steph couldn't fix. 

Of course, you can't see these pretty lights when the board is in the case properly; a drawback of a tight fitting walnut case, I suppose. I was potentially going to get the case milled out of acrylic or printed out of resin but I ultimately decided to do it myself with materials I could work with. Perhaps the next iteration will be a clear case, so the underglow shows through better. I thought it would leak out around the edges of the board, but it really does not. Or, I will wire my next board to have per-key LEDs so that each of the individual keys light up, and then the underglow wouldn't be necessary. Maybe the next one will have both. 

This keyboard is teaching me something I already knew but hadn't admitted when I started the project; this is my first, but it will not be my last. I'm hooked.