keyboard

443 Articles

Trackball Split Keyboard Will Roll Into Your Heart

November 23, 2022 by 11 Comments

One of the nicest problems to have with a split keyboard, even a monoblock split, is deciding what to put in the middle. Most people go for either the mouse, or else their beverage of choice. Some might sub in a bowl of snacks later on in the day. Personally, we most often use the space for holding notes.

[AlSaMoMo] went with the mouse, but decided to make it a permanent installation. They planted a trackball in the middle of Batreeq, their awesome little monoblock split. For a while now, [AlSaMoMo] has been using 30-key ‘boards and wanted to see about integrating a trackball. Not only that, Batreeq has a fun-looking scroll ring and haptic feedback. Plus, it just looks fantastic.

Even though Batreeq is vaguely bat-shaped, the word translates to ‘penguin’, which, on second glance, the keyboard does appear a bit villainous. But fear not, Batreeq’s PCB is open source, as are all of [AlSaMoMo]’s keyboards.

Want to have more space between your hands? Check out this split that uses VGA connections.

Via KBD #103

Colorful Split Keyboard Uses VGA Connections

November 19, 2022 by 14 Comments

When it comes to building a split keyboard, you have a lot of options when it comes to the cable. Many will use a standard 3.5 mm TRRS cable, and others might use something more esoteric like RJ-45 to run between the halves. This only works if you’re using two controllers; if you only want one controller, you have to pass the matrix from one side to the other, which typically requires more than the four wires offered by the aforementioned choices. While rummaging around, [Joe Scotto] found a VGA cable and thought, why not use that?

This lovely Barbie-themed peripheral is a split version of an earlier board he built called the ScottoFly, which is a monoblock split with a void in the middle. As with that one, this is hand-wired using thicc brass insulated with heat-shrink, uses a solid 3D-printed plate, and a printed case. And like a madman, [Joe] coiled the cable.

Unfortunately, this proved to be problematic in the wire breakage sense, or so he thought. The real problem turned out to be that the middle row of pins on a VGA connector all act like ground, so they can’t be used to pass rows and columns. However, there were still enough viable pins to send the 4×5 matrix across. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.

Continue reading “Colorful Split Keyboard Uses VGA Connections” →

Keyboard One Is An Ear Of Corne

November 4, 2022 by 16 Comments

There are all kinds of avenues into the mechanical keyboarding hobby, and one of the more well-traveled ones runs between coworkers. [crsayen] aka [DrJamesOIncandenza] has one such relationship, and was turned on to the CRKBD a while back by an office mate. For the uninitiated, that’s short for Corne keyboard, which is a column-staggered 3×6 split keyboard with three thumb keys per hand.

While [JOI] liked the Corne well enough, especially with chocs, he got the occasional craving to slap (that’s what we’re calling typing on linears from now on — slapping vs. clacking) on some silent MX switches and so built this Corne-derivative monoblock split called Keyboard One. Aside from the more obvious differences,

We think this looks rather spanking for a first keyboard, sort of like a slightly smaller Alice or something. But you don’t have to go to great lengths to obtain [JOI]’s knowledge, for everything is on GitHub. [JOI] says they sort of regret going 3×6, but are already planning another build with more keys. See, that’s the spirit.

Via KBD #101

Playdate Handheld Turned Typewriter

October 18, 2022 by 6 Comments

The Playdate is an interesting gaming system. It’s a handheld, has a black and white screen, and superficially reminds us a little bit of the original Game Boy, right down to the button layout. But the fact that it has a second controller that pops out of the side, that this controller is a crank, and that the whole system was made by the same people that made Untitled Goose Game, makes us quite intrigued. Apparently it has made an impact on others, too, because this project turns the gaming system into a typewriter.

The Playdate doesn’t have native support for USB accessories unless it’s plugged into this custom 3D printed dock. Inside of the dock is a Teensy 4.1 which handles some translation between the keyboard and the console. Once the dock is taken care of the text editor needs to be side-loaded to the device as well. The word processor has the ability to move the cursor around, insert and delete text, and the project’s creator, [t0mg], plans to add more features in future versions like support for multiple files, changing the font, and a few other things as well.

For anyone interested in recreating this project, all of the printable files, the text editor, and the schematics are all available in the GitHub repo. It’s an impressive project for a less well-known console that we haven’t seen many other hacks for, unless you count this one-off Arduboy project which took some major inspiration from the Playdate’s crank controller.

A left-hand side unit of a split keyboard. The keys are black with RGB lighting and the key legends are displayed on small OLED screens in each key.

Poly Keyboard Has Screens In Every Key

October 17, 2022 by 18 Comments

Aspiring polyglots can be stymied by differing keyboard layouts and character sets when switching between languages. [Thomas Pollak]’s Poly Keyboard circumvents this problem by putting a screen in every key of the keyboard.

In his extensive build logs, [Pollak] details the different challenges he’s faced while bringing this amazing keyboard to life. For example, the OLED screens need glyph rendering to handle the legends on the keys. Since the goal is true universal language support, he used the Adafruit-GFX Library as a beginning and was able to extend support to Japanese, Korean, and Arabic so far in his custom fork of QMK.

The attention to detail on this build is really impressive. Beside the dedication to full glyph support, [Pollak] has measured the amount of extra force the flex cables from the OLEDs add to the actuation of the keyswitches. For the Gateron yellow switch he tested, the difference was about 62.2 g versus the initial 49.7 g.

In case you’re thinking you’ve seen other screen keyboard projects, [Pollak] includes a roundup of similar projects in his logs as well. This isn’t the first keyboard we’ve seen here at Hackaday with an OLED on top of a keyswitch, although [Voidstar Lab]’s MiRage only has three screen keys that were removed in a later iteration. If you’d like a more conventional fixed display in your keyboard, check out [Peng Zhihui]’s modular board with an e-ink display and haptic feedback knob.

Continue reading “Poly Keyboard Has Screens In Every Key” →

Five-Foot Keyboard Lays It All On The Line

October 7, 2022 by 17 Comments

We would bet that among the most technologically-inclined of our readership, there are plenty of hunt-and-peck typists. Because of course, typing quickly and from the home row has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with practice and rote muscle memorization. But what if the keyboard was all home row?

That’s right — Google Japan (translated) is back at it with another joke peripheral that happens to be 100% real and open-source. Whether you want to keep your distance from others while you toil at the coffee shop, or really, really want to get into the pair programming thing, this is the keyboard for you. While the prototype was a whopping seven feet long (or wide, whatever), the final version is shorter and friendlier, and can double as a walking stick on those outdoor sanity breaks with the addition of a protective shoe.

As with their mug keyboard, we appreciate the work that went into making this keyboard real just as much as the joke itself. Our favorite factoid has to be that this is made up of 17 different circuit boards, including the control board. Be sure to check out the fairly hilarious promo video after the break.

Continue reading “Five-Foot Keyboard Lays It All On The Line” →

Custom Macro Pad Helps Deliver Winning Formulas

October 5, 2022 by 18 Comments

For those of us with science and engineering backgrounds, opening the character map or memorizing the Unicode shortcuts for various symbols is a tedious but familiar part of writing reports or presentations. [Magne Lauritzen] thought there had to be a better way and developed the Mathboard.

With more than 80 “of the most commonly used mathematical operators” and the entire Greek alphabet, the Mathboard could prove very useful to a wide number of disciplines. Hardware-wise, the Mathboard is a 4×4 macro pad, but the special sauce is in the key set implementation firmware. While the most straightforward approach would be to pick 16 or 32 symbols for the board, [Magne] felt that didn’t do the wide range of Unicode symbols justice. By implementing a system of columns and layers, he was able to get 6+ symbols per key, giving a much greater breadth of symbols than just 16 keys and a shift layer. The symbols with a dot next to them unlock variants of that symbol by double or triple-tapping the key. For instance, a lower or capital case of a Greek letter.

The Mathboard currently works in Microsoft Office’s equation editor and as a plain-text Unicode board. [Magne] is currently working on LaTeX support and hopes to add Open Office support in the future. This device was an honorable mention in our Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals Contest. If you’d like to see another interesting math-themed board, check out the one on the MCM/70 from 1974.