Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With John Lennon’s Typewriter

April 15, 2025 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

The Clawtype, a one-handed number with a handy strap and a good-sized display. — Image by [akavel] via GitHub

Reader [akavel] was kind enough to notify me about Clawtype, which is a custom wearable chorded keyboard/mouse combo based on the Chordite by [John W. McKown].

First of all, I love the brass rails — they give it that lovely circuit sculpture vibe. This bad boy was written in Rust and currently runs on a SparkFun ProMicro RP2040 board. For the mouse portion of the program, there’s an MPU6050 gyro/accelerometer.

[akavel]’s intent was to pair it with XR glasses, which sounds like a great combination to me. While typing is still a bit slow, [akavel] is improving at a noticeable pace and does some vim coding during hobby time.

In the future, [akavel] plans to try a BLE version, maybe even running off a single AA Ni-MH cell, and probably using an nRF52840. As for the 3D-printed shape, that was designed and printed by [akavel]’s dear friend [Cunfusu], who has made the files available over at Printables. Be sure to check it out in the brief demo video after the break.

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Keebin’ With Kristina: The One Where We Embrace The Jank

April 7, 2025 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Yeah, yeah — not a keyboard. But one keyboard-adjacent topic I’m certainly interested in is that of finding a satisfying mouse. Why settle for ticky micro-switches when you could have full-on thock in both peripherals?

My own personal peripherals. Banana mat for scale.

I’ve been using a Logitech Ergo M575 for a couple of years now. As you can see, it’s a trackball with two extra buttons, which come programmed for forward and back. I find this next to useless, so I employed AutoHotKey and changed them to Ctrl+C on the up switch, and Ctrl+V on the down switch.

[Aknup] commented on the previous Keebin’ and brought up MMO mice, which, I didn’t know those things had a name other than maybe ‘multi-button mice’. And yes, there are a few trackball MMOs out there. I’ve got my eye on a couple already.

Does anyone have a trackball MMO? I hate to spend $100+ on something I won’t like. I’m intrigued that the one I found that’s the most attractive is less a thumb trackball and more a two-fingers-at-once kind of situation. That will take some getting used to, but the way my trackball moves sometimes, it could be a really positive change.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 315: Conductive String Theory, Decloudified Music Players, And Wild Printing Tech

April 4, 2025 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up across the (stupid, lousy) time zones to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

Again, no news is good news. On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. If you think you can identify the sound amid all the talking, you could win a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!

After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation when it comes to a pair of formerly-cloud music players. We take a look at a crazy keyboard hack, some even crazier conductive string, and a perfectly cromulent list of 70 DIY synths on one wild webpage. Finally, we rethink body art with LEDs, and take a look at a couple of printing techniques that are a hundred years or so apart in their invention.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

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Ditto That

April 3, 2025 by Kristina Panos 42 Comments

In the 1982 movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High, a classroom of students receives a set of paperwork to pass backward. Nearly every student in the room takes a big whiff of their sheet before setting it down. If you know, you know, I guess, but if you don’t, keep reading.

Those often purple-inked papers were fresh from the ditto machine, or spirit duplicator. Legend has it that not only did they smell good when they were still wet, inhaling the volatile organic compounds within would make the sniffer just a little bit lightheaded. But the spirit duplicator didn’t use ghosts, it used either methanol (wood alcohol), isopropyl, or, if you were loaded, ethyl alcohol.

Invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, ditto machines were popular among schools, churches, and clubs for making copies of worksheets, fliers, and so on before the modern copy machine became widespread in the 1980s. Other early duplicating machines include the mimeograph, the hectograph, and the cyclostyle.

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Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Leather Keyboard

March 31, 2025 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

Are you eager to get your feet wet in the keyboard surf, but not quite ready to stand up and ride the waves of designing a full-size board? You should paddle out with a macro pad instead, and take on the foam face-first and lying down.

A beautiful purple galaxy-themed macro pad with nine switches and three knobs. — Image by [Robert Feranec] via Hackaday.IO

Luckily, you have a great instructor in [Robert Feranec]. In a series of hour-long videos, [Robert] guides you step by step through each part of the process, from drawing the schematic, to designing a PCB and enclosure, to actually putting the thing together and entering a new world of macros and knobs and enhanced productivity.

Naturally, the fewer keys and things you want, the easier it will be to build. But [Robert] is using the versatile Raspberry Pi 2040, which has plenty of I/O pins if you want to expand on his basic plan. Not ready to watch the videos? You can see the schematic and the 3D files on GitHub.

As [Robert] says, this is a great opportunity to learn many skills at once, while ending up with something terrifically useful that could potentially live on your desk from then on. And who knows where that could lead?

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Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Grasshopper Typewriter

March 24, 2025 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

Do you consider your keyboard to be a fragile thing? Meet the glass keyboard by [BranchNo9329], which even has a glass PCB. At least, I think the whole thing is glass.

The back side of an all-glass keyboard. Yeah. — Image via [BranchNo9329] via reddit

There are so frustratingly few details that this might as well have been a centerfold, but I thought you all should see it just the same. What we do have are several pictures and a couple of really short videos, so dive in.

I can tell you that [BranchNo2939] chose a glass substrate mainly due to curiosity about its durability compared with FR4. And that the copper circuitry was applied with physical vapor deposition (PVD) technology.

Apparently one of [BranchNo2939]’s friends is researching the bonding of copper on to glass panels, so they thought they’d give a keyboard a go. Right now the thing is incomplete — apparently there’s going to be RGB. Because of course there’s going to be RGB. Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Grasshopper Typewriter” →

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cheesy Keyboard

March 18, 2025 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Let’s just kick things off in style with the fabulously brutalist Bayleaf wireless split from [StunningBreadfruit30], shall we? Be sure to check out the wonderful build log/information site as well for the full details.

Image by [StunningBreadfruit30] via reddit

Here’s the gist: this sexy split grid of beautiful multi-jet fusion (MJF) keycaps sits on top of Kailh PG1316S switches. The CNC-machined aluminium enclosure hides nice!nano boards with a sweet little dip in each one that really pull the keyboard together.

For the first serious custom build, [StunningBreadfruit30] wanted a polished look and finish, and to that I say wow, yes; good job, and nod enthusiastically as I’m sure you are. Believe it or not, [StunningBreadfruit30] came into this with no CAD skills at all. But it was an amazing learning experience overall, and an even better version is in the works.

I didn’t read the things. Is it open-source? It’s not, at least not at this time. But before you get too-too excited, remember that it cost $400 to build, and that doesn’t even count shipping or the tools that this project necessitated purchasing. However, [StunningBreadfruit30] says that it may be for sale in the future, although the design will have an improved sound profile and ergonomics. There’s actually a laundry list of ideas for the next iteration. Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cheesy Keyboard” →