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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Transmitting Typewriter

Image by [SrBlonde] via Hackaday.IO
Okay, so we’re opening with more than just a keyboard, and that’s fine. In fact, it’s more than fine, it’s probably the cutest lil’ ZX Spectrum you’ll see today.

[SrBlonde]’s wonderful micro Spectrum project has only the essential inputs, which makes for an interesting-looking keyboard for sure. Inside you’ll find an Orange Pi Zero 2 board loaded with Batocera so [SrBlonde] can play all their favorite childhood games on the 5″ IPS display.

Something else that’s interesting is that the switches are a mix of blues and blacks — clickies and linears. I can’t figure out how they’re distributed based on the numbers in the components list, but I could see using clickies on the alphas and linears everywhere else (or vice versa). At any rate, it’s a great project, and you can grab the STL files from Thingiverse if you’re so inclined.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Pickle Pi

Image by [jefmer] via Hackaday.IO
The unstoppable [jefmer] wrote in to alert me to Pickle Pi, their latest Keebin’-friendly creation. Why “Pickle Pi”? Well, the Pi part should be obvious, but the rest comes from the Gherkin 30% ortholinear keyboard [jefmer] built with Gateron Yellows and, unfortunately, second-choice XDA keycaps, as the first batch were stolen off of the porch.

If you’re wondering where the rest of the keys are, they are accessible by holding various keys rather than tapping them. Shift is Shift when tapped held, but becomes Enter when tapped. [jefmer] wrote out their entire project description on the thing in order to break in the Gherkin.

The brains of this acrylic sandwich tablet is a Pi Zero 2, with a Pro Micro for the keyboard controller. Although programs like Ghostwriter and Thonny work fine, Chromium is “painfully slow” due to the RAM limitations of the Pi Zero 2. On the upside, battery life is 7-8 hours depending on usage. Even so, [jefmer] might replace it with a Pi 4 — the current battery pack won’t support a Pi 5.
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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Offset-Stem Keycaps

Image by [Leo_keeb] via reddit
Love it or hate it, I think this is a really cool idea. [Leo_keeb] has designed a new set of keycaps for the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB). The keycaps’ stems are offset to the left or right in order to turn this once-staggered keyboard into an ortholinear object.

So, how do they feel? There is a slight wobble to them, according to [Leo_keeb] — it’s a bit like pressing the left or right side of Tab. But the actuation is smooth, they say.

As you can see, these resin keycaps weren’t designed with the typical Cherry MX profile in mind, they are made for the Topre capacitive key switches of the HHKB. (No, those aren’t weird rubber domes.)

When I asked about sharing the STLs, [Leo_keeb] advised me that they might be willing to release STLs for  Cherry MX switches in the US layout if there is enough interest.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Pocket Cyberdeck

When you find something you love doing, you want to do it everywhere, all the time. Such is the case with [jefmer] and programming. The trouble is, there is not a single laptop or tablet out there that really deals well with direct sunlight. So, what’s a hacker to do during the day? Stay indoors and suffer?

Image by [jefmer] via Hackaday.IO
The answer is a project like Pocket Pad. This purpose-built PDA uses a Nice! Nano and a pair of two very low-power ST7302-driven monochrome displays. They have no backlight, but they update much faster than e-paper displays. According to [jefmer], the brighter the ambient light, the more readable the displays become. What more could you want? (Besides a backlight?)

The miniature PocketType 40% is a little small for touch typing, but facilitates thumbs well. [jefmer] added those nice vinyl transfer legends and sealed them with clear nail polish.

All of the software including the keyboard scanner is written in Espruino, which is an implementation of JavaScript that targets embedded devices. Since it’s an interpreted language, [jefmer] can both write and execute programs directly on the Pocket Pad, using the bottom screen for the REPL. I’d sure like to have one of these in my pocket!
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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The 200% Typewriter

Image by [jefmer] via Hackaday.IO
You know, the really sad truth about cyberdecks and cyberdeck-adjacent builds is that many of them just end up on the shelf, collecting dust while waiting for the dystopian future. Well, not this one. No, [jefmer] says their Portable Pi sees daily use, and even comes along on the go.

Since [jefmer] is “temperamentally unsuited to 3D printing”, the Pi 4B and its accessories are nestled in a rugged, splash-proof case under some acrylic sheets. One of those accessories, the keyboard, is a KPrepublic BM40 with Gateron Yellows. In order to get used to the number and symbols layer, [jefmer] laid down some great-looking labels above the keyboard.

Although the build started with an SD card for storage, [jefmer] has since upgraded to a 120 GB SSD. This required a beefy battery pack, but the difference is that it gets around four hours of power versus five hours when using an SD card.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Typewriter Orchestra

Have you ever wished you had more control over what goes into a kit keyboard build? Like, a whole lot more control? Well, that’s the idea behind the Akruvia 12×4 Playground by [iketsj].

Image by [iketsj] via YouTube

This is a 48-key ortholinear keyboard, but other than that, it’s a complete blank slate. The kit includes the PCB, diodes, RGB LEDs, and Kailh Choc V1 hot swap sockets, which is really the only choice you don’t have in the matter.

All the rest is up to you, thanks to a generous prototyping area that wraps around three sides of the keys. Bring your own microcontroller and anything else that sounds useful, like displays, rotary encoders, gesture sensors, pointing devices, you name it.
You could even magnetically link a macro pad to one side, as [iketsj] teases in the intro video. [iketsj] has made the kit available through links on their website, and you’ll find a product guide there as well.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Really Snazzy Folding Keyboard

Sometimes you just have to throw your hat in the ring, and throw it hard. Here is [mkdxdx]’s rockin’ EVH 5150-esque take on the keyboard business. The Mriya foldable keyboard aims to be and sport a number of things, and it does all of them in great style. I could totally see my fingers flying over this thing somewhere in the wild, with robots fighting in the distance.

Image by [mkdxdx] via Hackaday.IO
I have to say I really like the fact that [mkdxdx] uses thumb keys here for what I can only assume are Enter, Space, and Backspace. It’s a nice compromise between compactness and ergonomics. I also really like the totally impractical but quite cool-looking connector that runs between the top and bottom.

If the color scheme looks familiar, you’re probably remembering [mkdxdx]’s first-place-winning entry into the 2023 Cyberdeck Contest. This RP2040-based keyboard might just end up as part of a larger project, but it’s already an outstanding peripheral. We can’t wait to see the next phase, should there be one for this keyboard.

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