The full bill of materials, in Canadian dollars

In Chapter 3 you met every part in the Lily58 bag and learned what each one does. Now we buy them. This chapter is the complete shopping list for a wired, solder-it-yourself Lily58 with hotswap sockets, priced in Canadian dollars, sourced from stores that actually ship here, with the customs and shipping math done in the open so nothing surprises you at the door.

One reminder from the how-to-read chapter: every price below is approximate as of mid-2026. Stores rotate stock and currencies drift. The neighbourhoods and the relative comparisons are the durable part.

The master list

Here is everything, at a glance. Each row gets its own section below with real buying advice.

Add tools and consumables from Chapter 5 and you have the entire project.

The Lily58 PCB kit

The heart of the order. A PCB kit is the pair of printed circuit boards (one left, one right, and they are different, not mirror copies of the same board) plus the small electronic parts that solder onto them: about 58 diodes, 58 hotswap sockets, two TRRS jacks, and two reset switches. Most sellers bundle all of this together under a name like "Lily58 PCB kit" or "Lily58 Pro kit", and the bundle is what you want. Buying the bare boards and hunting down the small parts separately saves almost nothing and multiplies the ways to get a wrong part.

Where to find one:

• Etsy.ca. Search "Lily58 PCB kit" and filter by seller location. A number of small makers, including Canadian ones, sell exactly this bundle. A Canadian Etsy seller is the jackpot: domestic shipping, no customs, and you can message a human with questions.
• AliExpress. The same search phrase. Cheapest by a wide margin, often the full kit with case plates included, with the usual AliExpress trade: two to five weeks of waiting and photos you should read skeptically. Check the listing text confirms hotswap sockets and diodes are included.
• US keyboard shops. Little Keyboards and Boardsource both carry Lily58 boards and parts, priced in US dollars, and ship to Canada. Clear listings, fast support, and you pay for that in exchange rate and shipping.
• Custom KBD (Australia) also stocks Lily58 kits and ships worldwide, worth a look when others are out of stock.

Expect roughly CAD 40 to 80 for the PCB kit once converted, before shipping. When comparing listings, the checklist is: both PCBs, diodes, hotswap sockets, TRRS jacks, reset switches. If a listing is vague about any of those, ask or move on.

Don't be confused. "Hotswap" in this book means hotswap sockets for the switches, so you can pull a switch out later without desoldering. You still solder those sockets on, along with everything else. It is not the same as a "no-solder" keyboard, where the factory already did all of this. We chose the solder-it-yourself hotswap route in Chapter 2 because it teaches the most and forgives the most.

Case and plates

The Lily58's usual "case" is a sandwich: a top plate the switches clip into, a bottom plate that covers the solder side, and a set of M2 standoffs and screws (M2 is the thread size, two millimetres) holding the layers apart. Plates are cut from FR4 (the same fibreglass material as the PCB itself, cheap and sturdy) or acrylic (clear plastic, shows off your work, cracks if you overtighten).

Many PCB kit listings, especially on AliExpress and Etsy, include the plates and hardware. Read the listing carefully; "PCB only" means you will be ordering plates separately from the same sort of vendor for another CAD 20 to 50. Getting plates and PCBs from the same seller in one order is worth a few dollars of premium, because they are guaranteed to match.

Controllers: two Pro Micro compatibles, and which kind to get

Each half of the Lily58 carries a microcontroller, a thumb-sized computer board that scans the switches and speaks USB to your computer. You need two. The Lily58 is designed around the footprint of the classic Pro Micro, so anything sold as "Pro Micro compatible" fits the same holes.

Within that footprint there are two families, and the choice is easy:

• RP2040 boards with USB-C (sold as Elite-Pi, Frood, or generic "RP2040 Pro Micro" on AliExpress and amazon.ca). These use the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip: 16 MB of storage, a sturdy USB-C connector, and firmware flashing that works by dragging a file onto what looks like a USB drive. Roughly CAD 8 to 25 each depending on vendor. Buy these.
• Classic ATmega32u4 Pro Micros with micro-USB. This is the 2016 option: 32 KB of storage (modern firmware barely fits), and a micro-USB port that is infamous for ripping clean off the board if the cable gets yanked. The only reason to choose one today is a legacy firmware setup that specifically requires the ATmega chip, which does not apply to this build.

Search terms that work: "RP2040 Pro Micro USB-C" on AliExpress or amazon.ca, or the names Elite-Pi (Keebio) and Frood at keyboard shops. Canadian shops, including Clickety Split, stock Pro Micro compatible controllers too, which keeps the whole order domestic.

Sockets and Mill-Max pins for the controllers

Strongly recommended, and here is the pitch. The controller is the one part of this build that both costs real money and can die (a botched flash, a static zap, a failed USB port). If you solder it directly to the PCB, replacing it means desoldering 24 joints from your finished keyboard, which is the hardest rework job in this hobby. If instead you solder cheap socket strips to the PCB and press Mill-Max pins (precision machined pins, named for the main manufacturer) into the controller, the controller just plugs in like a cartridge and pulls out the same way.

The insurance costs about CAD 10 to 20 for enough sockets and pins for two controllers, sold as a "controller socketing kit" at keyboard shops or as Mill-Max 0305 pins plus female headers at Digi-Key Canada (more on Digi-Key in Chapter 5). It also lifts the controller a few millimetres, which matters if you add OLEDs. Pay the twenty dollars.

OLED screens (optional)

Each half can carry a small OLED display, the 128 by 32 pixel kind built on the SSD1306 chip (that chip name is the search term). They show the active layer, a logo, or whatever the firmware draws, and they peek through a window in many Lily58 cases. Entirely optional, mildly delightful, and cheap: about CAD 5 to 15 for a pair on AliExpress or amazon.ca. Search "SSD1306 128x32 OLED". Make sure you get the 128x32 size, not the squarer 128x64, which does not fit the Lily58's header position or cover.

The cables

Two cables, one of which hides a classic beginner trap.

The two halves talk to each other through a TRRS cable, a cable with 3.5 mm headphone-style plugs. TRRS stands for tip, ring, ring, sleeve: the four metal segments on the plug, giving four conductors. The Lily58 needs all four. A TRS cable (tip, ring, sleeve, three segments, the standard aux audio cable) looks nearly identical and will not work, or will work in a maddening half-broken way.

Don't be confused. Count the black separator rings on the plug. Three rings between four metal segments means TRRS, correct. Two rings means TRS, an audio cable, wrong. Listings that just say "aux cable" are usually TRS. Search "TRRS cable 4 pole" on amazon.ca and expect CAD 5 to 15.

You also need a USB-C cable from the left half to your computer, and it must be a data cable, not a charge-only one. Charge-only cables are common freebies with gadgets and are the source of many "my keyboard is dead" panics (we will meet this again in Chapter 13). Any USB-C cable that has ever synced data for you is fine, so this line is often free.

Switches: 60 or more, and the per-switch math

The Lily58 has 58 keys, so you need 58 MX-style switches (MX is the de facto standard stem and pin layout, from the original Cherry MX design). Buy at least 60; spares cost cents and a bent pin costs a switch.

Switch shopping is per-switch economics. Prices run from about CAD 0.35 to 1.20 per switch, so a board's worth is CAD 21 at the bottom and CAD 72 at the top. The budget default this book recommends is the Gateron Milky Yellow, a smooth linear switch, usually near the bottom of that range, with a huge fan base at ten times the price point. If you already know you love clicky or tactile switches, buy what you love; Chapter 1 covered the differences.

Where to buy matters more for switches than any other part, because switches are heavy. Sixty switches plus keycaps is a few hundred grams, and international shipping is priced by weight. Canadian shops shine here:

• Deskhero.ca (British Columbia): big switch selection, quick Canada Post shipping.
• Apex Keyboards (Calgary): switches, keycaps, and accessories.
• Ashkeebs (Ontario): switches and DIY parts.
• Clickety Split (clicketysplit.ca, Edmonton): the Canadian shop that specializes in split keyboards specifically, and stocks controllers, TRRS cables, and sockets alongside switches, so it can cover half this table in one domestic order.
• AliExpress and amazon.ca also sell Gateron switches; AliExpress often wins on raw price and loses on wait.

Keycaps: the shape matters more than the brand

Keycaps are the plastic hats, sold in sets, and the Lily58 makes one unusual demand: its keys are almost all the same size, 1u (one unit, the width of a letter key), plus two 1.5u thumb keys. A normal keycap set is shaped for a normal keyboard, with wide shift keys and a long spacebar you cannot use, and worse, its rows have different sculpted heights that look odd on the Lily58's column-staggered layout.

The clean answer is a uniform profile set, where every cap is the same shape: XDA and DSA are the two common uniform profiles, and sets sold as "ortho" (for ortholinear keyboards) are built exactly for boards like this, heavy on 1u caps. Check the listing includes at least a couple of 1.5u caps for the thumbs.

Legends or blank? Blank caps (no letters) are cheaper, always in stock, and a surprisingly practical choice because Chapter 12 will have you moving keys around anyway. Legended caps are friendlier for the first two weeks. No wrong answer.

Budget: a cheap AliExpress XDA set runs CAD 25 to 40; a decent PBT set (a harder, grippier plastic that does not go shiny with wear) from a Canadian or US shop runs CAD 30 to 60. Search "XDA blank keycaps" or "DSA ortho keycap set".

Sidebar: the wireless variant

This book builds the wired Lily58, but Chapter 2 mentioned the wireless exit, so here is its bill of materials delta. Wireless replaces the two controllers with two nice!nano v2 boards (a Pro Micro compatible with Bluetooth, about CAD 35 to 45 each), adds two small LiPo batteries (lithium polymer; sizes around 301230, a code meaning 3 mm thick, 12 mm wide, 30 mm long, though anything similar that fits under the controller works), and two tiny power switches. The TRRS cable disappears; the halves talk over Bluetooth.

Typeractive.xyz, the shop behind the nice!nano, sells all of this and even bundles complete wireless Lily58 kits, which is the least error-prone way to go wireless. Two cautions for Canadians: everything is in USD, and loose lithium batteries are restricted in air mail, so battery shipping options to Canada can be limited or slower, and some vendors will not ship batteries here at all. Buying batteries domestically (Canadian keyboard shops and electronics shops stock compatible LiPos) sidesteps that entirely. Budget roughly CAD 100 to 150 extra over the wired build, and note the battery-handling safety rules in Chapter 0.

Getting it all to Canada: the logistics

Now the part that this book exists for. Here is the vendor landscape from a Canadian chair:

Duties, taxes, and brokerage, in plain words

Three different hands can reach into an imported parcel, and beginners blur them together:

• Duty is an import tariff on the goods themselves. Good news: consumer electronics and keyboard parts are almost all duty-free into Canada regardless of origin, so duty is usually zero for this hobby.
• Tax is your regular GST/HST, owed on imports just like on local purchases. This one is real and unavoidable in the long run.
• Brokerage is a service fee the courier charges for doing the customs paperwork. It is not a government charge at all, and it is the one that stings: UPS and FedEx ground shipments commonly add CAD 10 to 30 in brokerage on top of the tax. Canada Post charges a flatter CAD 9.95 handling fee when it collects on a postal import, and often small parcels sail through with nothing collected.

Don't be confused. When a courier demands "customs charges" at your door, read the breakdown. The tax portion is legitimate and you would owe it anywhere. The brokerage portion is the courier billing you for paperwork, and the way to avoid it is choosing vendors and shipping methods, not arguing at the door.

There is also a floor under all of this, the de minimis threshold. Under the CUSMA trade agreement, parcels arriving by courier from the US or Mexico are duty-free under CAD 150 and tax-free under CAD 40. Parcels by post, or by courier from anywhere else, use the old threshold: CAD 20. So a USD 60 controller order couriered from a US shop typically arrives with tax owing but no duty, and whether you pay a fee at the door depends mostly on who carried it. AliExpress, meanwhile, has collected GST at checkout since 2021, which is why those parcels almost never come with a surprise bill.

Rules of thumb

1. Buy heavy things in Canada. Switches and keycaps dominate the parcel weight. A Canadian shop's CAD 12 Canada Post rate beats any international option once weight is involved, and there is no customs step at all.
2. Light and cheap can come from anywhere. PCBs, controllers, OLEDs, and cables weigh almost nothing; US or AliExpress shipping is fine for them.
3. Consolidate. Every separate international order is a separate shipping fee and a separate roll of the brokerage dice. Two orders beats five.
4. Prefer postal or "economy" shipping from US shops over UPS/FedEx ground when offered, precisely to dodge brokerage.

Three complete carts, landed in CAD

Three honest ways to buy this keyboard, end to end. All figures approximate, mid-2026, tax assumed at 13 percent HST (adjust for your province).

Cart A: budget, AliExpress-heavy, lands around CAD 130 to 180. Lily58 PCB kit with plates from AliExpress, generic RP2040 controllers, OLEDs, TRRS cable, Gateron Yellow switches, and an XDA keycap set, all from AliExpress with GST collected at checkout. Add a socketing kit from a Canadian shop. The cost is time: plan on a month before everything is on your desk.

Cart B: mid-range US and Canada mix, lands around CAD 250 to 350. The worked example, line by line:

Two orders total, everything arrives inside two weeks, and every vendor has a support inbox that answers.

Cart C: wireless via Typeractive, lands around CAD 350 to 500. The complete wireless bundle (boards, nice!nanos, batteries if they will ship them, cases) plus switches and caps. The nice!nanos alone are about CAD 90 of the difference, USD pricing and exchange do the rest, and batteries may need a separate domestic purchase per the sidebar above.

How long you will wait

Honest wait times, because the parcel-tracking phase of this hobby is real: AliExpress, two to five weeks. US shops, one to two weeks with postal shipping, sometimes faster by courier (at brokerage risk). Canadian shops, two to six days. If you want to build on a specific weekend, count backwards from it and order the slow things first. And if a slow parcel is in flight, Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 are exactly what the wait is for.

Takeaways

• One PCB kit, two RP2040 USB-C controllers, sockets and pins for them, a TRRS (four-pole!) cable, 60+ switches, and a uniform-profile keycap set is the whole keyboard. OLEDs are a cheap, optional treat.
• Socket your controllers. It is CAD 10 to 20 against the worst rework job in the hobby.
• Duty is nearly never the problem; courier brokerage fees and HST are. Buy heavy items (switches, caps) from Canadian shops, light items from anywhere, and consolidate orders.
• Landed budgets: about CAD 130 to 180 patient and cheap, CAD 250 to 350 comfortable, CAD 350 to 500 wireless.
• Order before you need it: AliExpress in weeks, the US in a week or two, Canada in days.

👉 Parts are only half the shopping. Next: the tool bench, from the soldering iron down to the flux pen, all from amazon.ca.