Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: The Morse Keyboard

June 14, 2022 by Jenny List 8 Comments

When it comes to rendering text input into an electronic form,the newest keyboards use USB for wired interfacing, while the oldest Morse keys use a single conductor. Shall the two ever meet? For [Matthew Sparks] the answer is yes, with his “The Gadget” Morse-to-USB HID interface which presents a Morse key to a computer as though it were a USB keyboard.

At its heart is a Seeduino Arduino clone, upon which the Morse key waggles a pin, and which through the extensive magic of software recognizes the keyed characters and converts them into USB key presses for the computer. It’s thus a surprisingly simple project, and the write-up spends far more time proselytizing the art of the carrier wave than it does on Arduino code.

Morse is simultaneously a manual art form, an efficient means of communicating through congested radio bands, and an anachronism, which probably explains its continued appeal in the radio amateur fraternity. We’re not sure how many keyboard warriors will switch to the single key with this project, but we can see that it might be a useful aid to learning as well as a pretty quick input method for the owner of an experienced fist.

Morse has featured in many projects here before, not least in this assistive Morse keyboard.

Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: Touch This Macro Pad

June 13, 2022 by Jenny List 5 Comments

The need to provide custom controls for complex software packages has been satisfied in many ways, the most usual of which is to have a configurable keypad. It’s a challenge [Meir Michanie] has taken up in a slightly different way, by creating a custom touch-screen macro pad. Unlike the buttons, this allows entirely custom layouts with different shaped keys in any configuration.

At its heart is a versatile ESP32 touch screen development board of the type that can be found easily among the pages of your favorite online electronics mart. The Arduino IDE has been used to program the device, and configuration is as simple of providing it with a PNG of the desired layout, and a CSV file to define the buttons. The whole then connects via BLE where it’s presented to the host computer as a keyboard. The result is one of the coolest macro pads we’ve ever seen, with a limitless number of options.

With such a neat idea it’s perhaps no surprise among the numbers of macro pads that have made it to these pages there might be another take on the same idea.

Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: A MacroPad With A Handy Layout Screen

June 11, 2022 by Jenny List No comments

The idea of a macro keypad is a great one, a set of keys programmable with frequent but complex tasks. But once programmed, how can the user keep track of which key does what? To save the world from grubby, hand-written sticky labels, here’s [Andreas Känner] with the Badger 2040 keypad — a macro pad with a display to show keymap info that’s fully programmable using CircuitPython.

At its heart is a Pimoroni Badger 2040 e-ink screen and RP2040 board which sits in a 3D-printed enclosure which in turn magnetically attaches to a 3D-printed keyboard enclosure. Inside is an I/O expander board, which is hand-wired to the switches. The firmware allows for easy configuration and even extension of the keypad itself, and presents itself to the host computer through USB. It’s even possible to have multiple different layouts on the same device.

Full details can be found in a comprehensive write-up on his website, and all the files are in a GitHub repository. If this doesn’t satisfy your need for customisable input goodness, then it’s not the first macro keypad we’ve shown you.

DIY Keyboard Can’t Get Much Smaller

June 4, 2022 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

The PiPi Mherkin really, really can’t get much smaller. The diminutive keyboard design mounts directly to the Pi Pico responsible for driving it, has a similar footprint, and is only about 9 mm thick. It can’t get much smaller since it’s already about as small as the Pi Pico itself.

Running on the Pi Pico is the PRK firmware, a keyboard framework that makes the device appear as a USB peripheral, checking the “just works” box nicely. The buttons here look a little sunken, but the switches used are available in taller formats, so it’s just a matter of preference.

We have to admit the thing has a very clean look, but at such a small size we agree it is perhaps more of a compact macropad than an actual, functional keyboard. Still, it might find a place in the right project. Design files are online, if you’re interested.

If you like small, compact keyboards but would prefer normal-sized keys, check out the PiPi Mherkin’s big brother, the PiPi Gherkin which gets clever with dual-function tap/hold keys to provide full functionality from only 30 keys, with minimal hassle.

Keyboards are important, after all, and deserve serious attention, as our own [Kristina Panos] knows perfectly well.

Wooden Keycaps Minus The CNC

June 3, 2022 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

What’s the most important part of the keycap? The average user-who-cares might tell you it’s the look and feel, but a keyboard builder would probably say the mounting style. That’s where the rubber meets the road, after all. For anyone trying to make their own keycaps, ‘the mount itself’ is definitely the correct answer. Try printing your own keycaps, and you’ll learn a lot about tolerances when it comes to getting the mount right.

Conversely, you could use a subtractive process like a wood mill to make keycaps. Sounds easy enough, right? But what about all of us who don’t have access to one? [cbosdonnat], who has no CNC, has blazed a cellulose trail, combining hand-tooled wooden keycaps with 3D-printed mounts to create fully-customized keycaps. It’s a great project with concise how-to, especially when it comes to building the jigs needed to keep the keycaps consistently sized and shaped.

It makes a whole lot of sense to start by hollowing out the bottom instead of shaping the business side first or even cutting out the key shape, since the mount is mechanically vital. Why waste time on the look and feel if the foundation isn’t there yet?

Hardwood is a must for DIY keycaps, because the walls need to be thin enough to both fit over the switch and within the matrix, and be sturdy enough not to break with use. We love the look of the varnish-transferred laser-printed logo, and only wish there was a video so we could hear the clacking.

There are all kinds of ways to put legends on DIY keycaps, like waterslide decals for instance.

Soap Mouse Is A Slippery Interface For Mid-Air Input

May 28, 2022 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

We all have those gnarly hacks that we still think about years after we first saw them. For serial tipster [Inne], one of those is [Patrick Baudisch]’s soap mouse, which is a DIY device for mousing in mid-air that uses components from off the shelf and around the house.

How does it work? The guts are encased in plastic shaped like a flattened pill, which slips into a fuzzy sock. By squeezing it a bit, the plastic pill rotates, spinning the outward-facing sensor round and round. Although we briefly reported on the soap mouse way back in 2006, we think it deserves to be in the spotlight today, especially since there’s a complete PDF guide to building one that’s optimized for gaming. If you want a regular pointing device instead, the conversion is described within.

[Patrick] uses a CompUSA (RIP) mouse in the guide, but any sufficiently slim and also short mouse should work as long as it has a decently long focal range, which is necessary for the sensor to see the hull. Plenty of travel mice out there should fit the bill.

The hull itself is made from two small (empty) bottles of hand sanitizer, chosen for their size, shape, and clarity of plastic. The outermost housing is a baby sock with a snap sewn on. [Patrick] says moving the sock against the plastic is difficult, and has tried various methods for lubrication, such as a bit of mineral oil inside some plastic bags.

Be sure to check out the video after the break, which does a great job of explaining everything from the various types of interaction to construction in 5½ minutes.

Since 2006, [Patrick] has held workshops where people have built their own soap mice. Have you built one? Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget about the Digi-Key-sponsored Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals contest, which runs through July 4th. Declare your independence from regular keyboards and mice and win big!

Continue reading “Soap Mouse Is A Slippery Interface For Mid-Air Input” →

Cityscape Multi-Level Keyboard Really Stacks Up

May 27, 2022 by Kristina Panos No comments

Keyboards with wells like the Maltron, the Kinesis Advantage family, and everything dactyl-esque out there are great. Trust us, we know this firsthand. But if you want to build your own curvy girl, how the heck can you implement that shape without 3D printing, clever woodworking, or access to tooling and plastic molding equipment? Well, there is another way. Over on twitter (translated) (Threadreader: Japanese, English), [tsukasa_metam] has achieved the key well effect by stacking up PCBs to create a skyline of vertically-staggered keys.

The boards of Cityscape are all screwed together for mechanical integrity, but those screws are working overtime, providing electrical connections between the layers as well. We particularly like that there is an impetus for this build other than ‘I thought of it, so let’s do it’ — [tsukasa_metam] tends to typo in the double key press sense, hitting Q for instance at the same time when A was the intended target. Between the 3.2 mm of key travel, the 2.8 mm step height, and those flat F10 keycaps, that is no longer an issue.

Instead of the popular low-profile Kailh choc switches, [tsukasa_metam] went with TTC KS32s, a new switch introduced in 2020. Unlike chocs, they’ll take Cherry MX-style keycaps, as long as they’re wearing short skirts. Cityscape isn’t totally open source, but the idea is now out there nonetheless, and we happen to have an Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals contest running now through July 4th.

Do stacked PCBs seem kinda familiar? Hey, it’s easier than winding transformer coils.

Via KBD #79