Nyan Keys: Because Your Keyboard Is Painfully Slow

December 10, 2023 by Kristina Panos 33 Comments

You probably don’t notice keyboard latency when typing or doing mundane tasks, but if you start gaming, that’s also when you might start complaining. Every millisecond counts in that arena. Think your keyboard is fast? Think again. Because unfortunately, no matter what you’ve got in there, that key matrix is slowing you down. What you need is an FPGA-based keyboard with an overkill MCU. You need Nyan Keys.

[Portland.HODL] set out to make the lowest-latency mechanical keyboard possible that would accept any Cherry-compatible switches, and boy howdy, is this thing fast.

Coupled with the STM32F723VET6 MCU is USB 2.0 HS, which has an 8000Hz polling rate. At worst, key latency measures 30μS, which blows the 1mS average out of the water.

Because it uses a Lattice Semi iCE40HX 4k FPGA, each key switch can connect to its own I/O pin, which also eliminates the need for diodes.

It also means that each key switch can have its own “core” — an 8-bit timer that is always counting up to 255. The key can only change its state when the timer reads 255. This acts as a rather clever debounce mechanism.

If all that’s not enough, [Portland.HODL] built an operating system called NyanOS written in C to avoid any performance-reducing overhead. Oh, and it has an opt-in Bitcoin miner.

We’ve seen a lot of keyboards, the fast ones are fast because of the input side — they are chording keyboards that take combinations to type, rather than using one key (or so) per character. The Characorder is so fast that it was banned from competition.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Biblically-Accurate Keyboard

December 7, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Well, it was bound to happen at some point. [sporewoh]’s bunchiez40 keyboard for ants is made of mouse switches, which of course begs for a mouse made of keyboard switches.

[sporewoh]’s keyboards have been steadily shrinking, and they built this in order to get the smallest possible form factor for the number of keys. Surprisingly, since the mouse switches have an actuation force similar to some heavier MX-style switches (~70 g), [sporewoh] is able to squeeze 85 WPM out of it, albeit with some argument from the wrists.

If you want to build a bunchiez40, everything is available on GitHub, including the CAD files for that lovely anodized aluminium case. The typing video is coming soon, and I’m taking bets on whether it’s as quiet as a mouse, as one redditor joked.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Biblically-Accurate Keyboard” →

A Toe-Tappin’ Set Of Morse Code Pedals

November 24, 2023 by Kristina Panos 15 Comments

What’s the worst thing about traditional Morse keyers? If you ask us, it’s the fact that you have to learn how to do two distinct things with one hand, and switch between them quite quickly and often.

This set of Morse code foot pedals is meant for those who are unable to use traditional methods of keying. It uses a retrofitted wireless keyboard to read Z and X as dit and dah, respectively, and convert the Morse code into text.

[Tevendale_Engineering] started by getting the controller out of the keyboard and figuring out which combination of pads sends Z and X. Then they wired those up with copper tape. The pedals themselves are made from 1/2″-thick wood, foam core board, and Nerf bullets to provide springiness.

There’s no solder here; it’s all copper tape and alligator clip test leads. So if this isn’t your hack for the day, we don’t know what is.

Not so great at Morse code? Here’s a clock that will train you on the numbers, at least.

Freshening Up Google’s USB-C PD Sniffer

November 22, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 15 Comments

USB-C Power Delivery has definitely made the big mess of wires a bit smaller but not all cables are created equal — some of them can handle upwards of 100 W while the cheapest can handle only 10. To accommodate this, USB-C cables need to actively tell both ends what their capabilities are, which turns an otherwise passive device into a hidden chip in a passive looking cable.

[Greg Davill] has decided to unravel the mystery of why your laptop isn’t charging by creating a USB-PD sniffer. Based on Google’s Twinkie sniffer, the FreshTwinkie makes the design more accessible by reducing the number of layers in the PCB and replacing the BGA variant of the STM32 for a more DIY-friendly QFN version. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody try and simplify the Twinkie; back in 2021, the Twonkie from from [dojoe] hit a number of similar notes.

USB-C Power Delivery is just one of many protocols spoken over the CC pins, and the FreshTwinkie might be able to detect when some of those are enabled and why or why not. With future development, it could potentially provide useful information as to why a Thunderbolt 4 or tunneled PCIe device isn’t working correctly.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Duplex Typewriter

November 21, 2023 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

The Coleco Adam? A not-so-great home computer that likely contributed to the downfall of the company. The keyboard, however, is a different story, and worth repurposing.

[Nick Bild] has created a USB adapter that uses a Teensy 4.1 and an RJ-12 breakout board. Now this wasn’t just a simple matrix to decode. No, the fine folks at Coleco rolled their own communications protocol called AdamNet.

The keyboard uses an RJ-12 connector and a single data line to communicate over a 62.5 kbit/s, half-duplex serial bus. Inside the keyboard is a Motorola 6801 that caches the key presses and sends them to the computer. So the BOM is limited to what you see above — an RJ-12 breakout and a Teensy 4.1. It’s great to see old keyboards come alive again, especially one with such cool sci-fi keycaps. Want to hear it clack? Of course you do.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Duplex Typewriter” →

Hacking Apple’s Magic Mouse To Fix Its Worst Flaws

November 19, 2023 by Maya Posch 50 Comments

The Magic Mouse was first released by Apple in 2009 and was a major departure from previous designs. It was sleek, low-profile, and featured a touch pad on the top for gestures. Although the first generation was powered by two AA batteries and didn’t lead to much commentary, the 2015 redesign caused a lot of scathing memes and worse, mostly due to the rechargeable battery and the Lightning charging port that had been located on its bottom, leading to Dead Magic Mouse syndrome when you wanted to charge it. Since then myriad hackers have tried to fix the Magic Mouse’s issues, with [Ivan Kuleshov]’s recent attempt being perhaps the most straightforward and possibly successful.

Essentially, the Magic Mouse has two major flaws: ergonomics and the worst possible location of the charging port. Although both 3D models and commercial products exist to alleviate the former issue – and some of these even add wireless charging in between mousing sessions – all attempts to relocate the charging port were met by failure, as the Magic Mouse cannot be both charged and used at the same time due to how Apple designed the circuit.

What [Ivan] did differently is that aside from tweaking some existing 3D models for Magic Mouse extensions to his liking, he also fixed the charging issue by avoiding Apple’s circuitry altogether and adding a USB-C port in the process. He also added a TP4056-based charging module, directly soldered to the battery’s terminals, that will top off the battery when plugged in. During experimentation on a live Magic Mouse, this led to the battery charge reported in MacOS increasing correspondingly. More or less, at least.

The 3D printed shell isn’t just a wrapper around the original mouse either, but splits the squat rodent into its upper and lower sections, so that the optical sensor isn’t suspended off the surface, while also keeping the touch-sensitive top section where it should be. According to [Ivan] the project files will be made available on his GitHub account in the near future.

Num Pad Reborn As Stream Deck

November 15, 2023 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Stream decks are cool and all, but they are essentially expensive, albeit sorta cool-looking macro pads. So why not try to make your own? You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch.

It all started when [dj_doughy] found an extremely clicky num pad in a recycle pile. It was so clicky, in fact, that even though [dj_doughy] didn’t need an external num pad, they wanted to keep it around as a fidget toy. From the video after the break, they look to be white ALPS switches. The only problem? It had a PS/2 connector.

Well, okay, there was another problem. The chip inside seemingly has no datasheet available. [dj_doughy] took to Discord for help, and was advised to just have the thing use extended keys, like F13-F24, and assign those as hotkeys in OBS.

In order to make it USB, [dj_doughy] need a microcontroller capable of acting as a Human Interface Device (HID). While [dj_doughy] tested using an Arduino Leonardo, they ended up using an Arduino Beetle due to its diminutive size. [dj_doughy] had a bit of trouble with the code sending two key presses, but found out they were just missing some variables. Now it works like a charm.

Would you like a macro pad that lets you physically reassign macros? Then check out this tile-based macro pad.