[Roberto Barrios] has a Korg Triton sampling keyboard which he enjoys very much, but has grown tired of using media of yesteryear to store his work. He had the option of floppy disk or Jazz drive and for a time he was using a floppy-to-USB emulator, but the keyboard still insisted on a 1.44 Mb storage limit using that method. He decided to crack open the case and add his own CF reader.

It should be noted that this hack could have been avoided by using the 25-pin connector on the back of the keyboard. He didn’t want to have external hardware, which is understandable if you’re gigging–it’s just more equipment to keep track of. His solution uses the floppy disk drive opening to mount the card reader. His electrical connections are made with a ribbon cable. He cut off one end, and soldered the individual wires to the contacts on the motherboard. The reader is seen as a SCSI drive by the Korg firmware thanks to a SCSI-to-IDE adapter, so the storage limitation is based quite fittingly on the size of the CF card used.

Look at that cable management. You’d think it came straight from the factory like this!

Wood and electronics don’t generally mix nowadays, but if you yearn back to a time when radios and the like had a nice wooden finish, this wooden computer case may be for you. Combine that with a Wooden keyboard enclosure, and maybe even a LCD monitor stand and you’ll have a setup that should fit in with any wood-themed decor!

The wooden computer case is actually more of a cover in that it uses most of the stock case to house all of the components.  It would definitely be a pain, and possibly a fire-hazard, to make a back mounting plate for all the components out of wood. To go along with this, the LCD monitor stand was engineered for a 21″ monitor when the owner of it wasn’t satisfied with the stability of the stock stand.  In the end, he ended up building something quite sturdy and nice looking to replace it.

The highlight for many for the keyboard would be that it was made, in part at least, out of a desire for a Commodore-64 keyboard.  It appears to function well andlooks great, so be sure to check out the other pictures after the break! Read the rest of this entry »

[Nav] wanted to change his keyboard mapping for one particular keyboard, rather than on each operating system. He used an AT90USBKey as a replacement PCB by soldering to all of the contacts on the key matrix. This allows him to remap the keys by following onscreen prompts.

The board enumerates as an HID device, and has a special mode which is accesses by plugging the keyboard in while holding down any key. If a text editor window is active you’ll see prompts from the microcontroller to press a series of keys. This is a routine used to learn how the key matrix is organized, and it’s your opportunity to change how each key is mapped. Since the mapping is saved to EEPROM, you can use any computer to map the keys, then plug the device into a systems that don’t offer software remapping. It could also be useful as a gaming keyboard, assuming there aren’t latency issues

As with the AVR-based arcade controller, this project uses the LUFA package to handle the USB stack.

After spending more than 250 hours on his project, [Admiral Aaron Ravensdale]‘s steampunk keyboard is finally done.

The keyboard mod was designed around a Model M. After removing the keycaps, [The Admrial] upcycled the keys from old Continental typewriters. Because his typewriters only had 47 keys and the Model M needs 104, three typewriters needed to be sourced off of eBay. Polishing the metal rings of the typewriter keys ate up more than 100 hours.

After building a brass frame from 8mm tubing and candle holders, the stained wood inlay was drilled for the keys. Status lights were installed and the PCB was connected. A pair of ‘gaslight’ keyboard lights were fabricated using 3mm tubing and very fitting “Golden White” LEDs.

[Admrial Ravensdale] put up an Instructable walking through the build process of his keyboard. There’s also a German-language PDF build log that shows every picture of every step.

This isn’t [Admrial Ravensdale]‘s first Hack A Day feature, but with a build that might one-up the original steampunk keyboard we can’t wait to see what comes out of [The Admiral]‘s workshop next.

[Kekszumquadrat] wanted to use a classic controller to play emulator games on his Android tablet so he set out to convert an SNES gamepad to connect via USB. He found an old USB keyboard at a yard sale for about 3 Euros. He knew that the emulator he prefers has the option of remapping all the inputs to keyboard keys which means a USB keyboard has all of the electronics he would need to pull this off.

Once he had separated the keyboard circuitry from the case [Kekszumquadrat] plugged it into his Linux box and used Xev to establish how the keyboard matrix is set up. Xev is a common package that opens up an active window on the X desktop. When run from command line, any events that happen to the window will be echoed along with verbose data about that event. When it comes to keypresses, you’ll get the keycode you need. He simply shorted columns and rows until he found the desired mapping, then it was on to soldering.

The SNES controllers are very simple devices. As we’ve seen with previous projects, they use a serial-to-parallel shift register to gather button data and send it to the console. [Kekszumquadrat] simply soldered between button traces and keyboard matrix contacts. Once he finished, the keyboard parts were tucked inside of the controller case and he’s left with a USB controller that appears to be unaltered.

Anyone reading this post has undoubtedly used a keyboard. How they work, however, is a bit more complicated than “one button, one input.”  [PyroElectro] has a great tutorial about building a PS/2 keyboard interface with a 7-segment LED display (video after the break). The tutorial also includes quite a bit of theory behind it.

The system displayed below uses a PIC controller to display the letter or number pressed. A schematic of the whole project is given here as well as a detailed bill of materials.

As for how the PS/2 keyboard works, each keystroke is encoded into a binary number or “scan code”. Most of these codes are 8-bit, but some special symbols use a longer code. Although the article doesn’t fully address it, a very similar method can be used to send data back to the keyboard for such purposes as tuning on a “capslock” or “numlock” key. Although turning on a light is fun, we could see this being used as an expedient method to control a relay for automation purposes.

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Deskthority forum user [lowpoly] recently posted a writeup on his complete overhaul of an Apple M0110  mechanical keyboard.  Any one familiar with the satisfying clack of a good mechanical key under their fingers can appreciate the effort put into this project.

[lowpoly] removed the keyboard’s PCB, rewired the key matrix adding diodes, built in a teensy USB board, broke apart the mechanical switches and fit replacement springs and finally applied a generous portion of retr0bright to all of the aging plastic. Since the teensy has no mounting holes [lowpoly] had to create a mounting assembly out of some spare plastic. A usb mini cable is even fitted into the original RJ-11 connector.  To compensate for the lack of PCB the key assembly was fitting with some rubber washers. To top off the whole thing some nice new rubber feet were taped to the underside of the M0110.

[lowpoly] reports that with the foam, new springs, and lack of PCB the keyboard is much quieter and easy to use.  The end result is a slick retro looking modern keyboard. If you’ll excuse us we have to go rooting through some old storage bins to find our own ancient keyboards.

We have seen our share of vintage keyboard hacks which can be useful, impressive and sometimes just odd. This build keeps it down to a nice simple, functional, useful retrofit. Nice work!

If you’ve ever thought the Kindle keyboard was a bit cramped you’re not alone. [Glenn's] been working on developing an external keyboard for the Kindle for quite some time. It may not make easier for everyone to use, but he’s motivated to improve usability for his sister who has Cerebral Palsy.

We see a lot of keyboard hacks that solder straight to the pads under the buttons, but for a compact device like the Kindle this would really mess things up. Instead of going that route, [Glenn] sourced a 20-pin Flexible Flat Cable and breakout board that match the internal Kindle connector. The prototype seen above uses a TS3A5017 serial multiplexer chip to simulate the keyboard button presses. That multiplexer is driven by a Teensy++ microcontroller board which is monitoring a larger set of buttons on the V.Reader seen above. Check out the video after the break for a brief demonstration, then look around at the rest of [Glenn's] blog posts to view different steps of the development cycle.

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