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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold

December 16, 2024 by 7 Comments

What do you get when you combine a Raspberry Pi 4B, a Kaypro keyboard, and a 9″ Apple ], you get the coolest AVR development workstation I’ve seen in a while.

A Raspberry Pi-based AVR workstation that uses a Kaypro keyboard and 9" monochrome Apple ][c display.
Image by [John Anderson] via Hackaday.IO
As you may have guessed, I really dig the looks of this thing. The paint job on the display is great, but the stripes on the keyboard and badging on are on another level. Be sure to check out the entire gallery on this one.

About that keyboard — [John] started this project with two incomplete keyboards that each had a couple of broken switches. Since the two keyboards were compliments of each other parts-wise, they made a great pair, and [John] only had to swap out three switches to get it up and clacking.

In order to make it work with the Pi, [John] wrote a user-mode serial driver that uses the uinput kernel module to inject key events to the kernel. But he didn’t stop there.

Although the Pi supports composite video out, the OS doesn’t provide any way to turn off the chroma color signal that’s modulated on top of the basic monochrome NTSC signal, which makes the picture look terrible. To fix that, he wrote a command-line app that sets up the video controller to properly display a monochrome NTSC signal. Happy AVRing on your amazing setup, [John]! Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold” →

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Funny Keyboard

December 9, 2024 by 19 Comments

What’s the most important keyboard macro you know? Honestly, it’s probably Ctrl-S. But do you use that one often enough? Chances are, you do not. What you need is a giant, dedicated Save keyboard that looks like a floppy disk.

A physical Save button that looks like a floppy disk and sends Ctrl-S over USB-C.
Image by [Makestreme] via Hackaday.IO
[Makestreme] recently started creating YouTube videos, but wasn’t pressing Save often enough. Couple that with editing software that crashes, and the result is hours of lost work.

Just like you’d expect, pressing the floppy icon triggers Ctrl-S when connected over USB-C. Internally, it’s a Seeeduino Xiao, a push button, and some wires.

The floppy disk itself is made of foam board, and everything is encased in a picture frame. If you want to make one for yourself, [Makestreme] has some great instructions over on IO.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Funny Keyboard” →

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Keyboard Mod

December 5, 2024 by 3 Comments

Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

A DIY mouse with a large touch screen.
Image by [Sam Baker] via Hackaday.IO
This story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Keyboard Mod” →

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The TRON Keyboard

November 25, 2024 by 14 Comments

[Folaefolc] was craving a new keyboard build a few weeks ago and got inspired by the humble 3.5″ floppy disk. So much so that he decided to make a split keyboard with each half having the exact footprint of a floppy — 90 mm x 94 mm. And you know the PCBs have floppy details silkscreened on the back. Just check out the gallery.

A split keyboard with a 3.5" floppy disk footprint for each half. An actual floppy sits between the two halves.
Image via [Folaefolc] via reddit
This bad boy uses a pair of Liatris microcontrollers, which are made by splitkb and are designed to be drop-in replacements for Pro Micros and an alternative to the RP2040.

The other fun part of this build is that [Folaefolc] used RJ9 connectors to join the halves instead of something like TRRS.

Beneath those candy keycaps are 34 Kailh choc v1 switches shoved into hot swap sockets in case [Folaefolc] changes his mind. Gerbers are available if you want to build one of these cuties!

Via reddit

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The TRON Keyboard” →

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Typo

November 18, 2024 by 15 Comments

Ceci n’est pas une keyboard, sure. But it’s keyboard-adjacent, and how. [Joshua Bemenderfer]’s wrists are tired of moving off the keyboard in order to mouse, and he decided to create a trackball that can sit just below the Space bar. The idea is to get rid of the regular mouse entirely if this works out.

A split keyboard with a DIY trackball beneath the Space bar.
Image by [Joshua Bemenderfer] via Hackaday.IO
And sure, the Ploopy family of open-source mice would welcome him with open arms, but they don’t come cheap. [Joshua]’s plan here is to make something for under $10. Ideally, less than $5.

Starting with an off-the-shelf trackball, the first BOM came in around $25 if you throw in $5 for the 3D printing of the case. [Joshua] added some cheap ceramic bearings to make it better. Since this was still too high, he turned to the internals of cheap mice.

Trial and error has resulted in a 99-cent special from Ali being the idea candidate. There are even cheaper mice to be had, but this one has an ideal layout for doing a bit of surgery. It also requires remapping since [Joshua] is flipping the sensor upside down and using a POM ball on top of it. Now he just needs to figure out how to add buttons and make them split keyboard-friendly.

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

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With All The Espionage

November 11, 2024 by 6 Comments

[Ziddy Makes] describes this cute little guy as a biblically-accurate keyboard. For the unfamiliar, that’s a reference to biblically-accurate angels, which have wings (and sometimes eyes) all over the place. They’re usually pretty scary to behold. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A cube keyboard with adorably vibrant pastel keycaps.
Image by [Ziddy Makes] via GitHub
But this? This is the opposite of scary. Sure, there are keys everywhere. But it’s just so darn adorable. You know what? It’s those keycaps.

This 16-key macro cube uses a Pro Micro and a system of PH2 5p ribbon cables to connect the four four-key sisterboards to the main board. A 3D-printed base holds all the boards in place. Out of all the switches in the world, [Ziddy] chose Otemu Blues. Clack!

Although it may take some getting used to, this seems like it would be a fun way to input macros. I can see the case for putting some rubber feet on the bottom, otherwise it might scoot around on the desk. That might be cute, but only the first couple of times, you know?

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With All The Espionage” →

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Butterfly Keyboard

October 16, 2024 by 5 Comments

Want to give prospective employers a business card that doesn’t immediately get tossed? Of course you do. If you’re one of us, the answer is obvious: make it some kind of a PCB.

A PCB business card that doubles as a keyboard.
Image by [Ricardo Daniel de Paula] via Hackaday.IO
But as those become commonplace, it’s imperative that you make it do something. Well, you could do a lot worse than giving someone a fully-functioning capacitive-touch keyboard to carry around.

[Ricardo Daniel de Paula] initially chose the CH32V303 microcontroller because it has native USB 2.0 and 16 capacitive touch channels, which can support up to 48 keys via multiplexing.

But in order to reduce costs, [Ricardo] switched to the CH582M, which does all that plus Bluetooth communication. The goal is to have an affordable design for a unique, functioning business card, and I would say that this project has it in spades.

Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Butterfly Keyboard” →