Spin The Video Track With A Mechanical Flair

October 12, 2020 by Matthew Carlson 16 Comments

One of the most difficult user interfaces to get right is video editing. It is complex and fiddly with large amounts of precision required even after four or five hours of straight editing. Seeking to bring some of that interface out into the real world, [Zack Freedman] built a mechanical video editing keyboard.

The keyboard in question features popular shortcuts and keys to breeze through different parts of editing. The biggest feature is, of course, the large scrubbing knob, allowing [Zack] to fly through long video with precision. We’ve seen our fair share of mechanical keyboards that aren’t traditional keyboards on Hackaday before, such as this number pad or this macro pad.

One of the unique constraints of this project was the fact that Zack had a deadline of two days. This self-imposed deadline was to help focus the work and drive it towards completion. This meant that it had to be designed in such a way that roadblocks or troublesome features could be designed around or cut out altogether. At its heart, this project is just 14 mechanical switches, 4 potentiometers, and a Teensy to drive it all. It is the design, prototyping, and thought that went into this project that makes it noteworthy. There are plenty of lessons here about how to manage a project’s timeline and advice about how to actually finish it.

Code, STL’s, diagrams, and instructions are all on his GitHub.

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Fat Bottomed-Keebs, You Make The Clackin’ World Go Round

October 9, 2020 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

Depending on the circles you run in, it can seem like the mechanical keyboard community is all about reduced layouts, and keebs without ten-keys are about as big as it gets. But trust us, there’s plenty of love out there for the bigger ‘boards like [Ben]’s tasty fat-bottomed keyboard. Man oh man, what a delicious slab of throwback to the days when keyboards doubled as melee weapons.

More specifically, this is a 199-key modified Sun Type 5 layout. It runs on two Teensy 2.0s — one for the keyboard matrix, and one for everything else. [Ben] made the metal enclosure entirely by hand without a CNC or laser cutter. While I don’t personally care for linear switches, I have mad respect for these, which are vintage Cherry Blacks pulled from various 1980s AT/XT boards. That 10-key island on the left is dedicated to elementary macros like undo/redo, cut/copy/paste, and open/close/save.

We absolutely love the gigantic rotary encoders, which give it a bit of a boombox look. There’s even reuse involved here, because the encoder knobs are made from jam jar lids that are stuffed with homemade Sugru. [Ben] can use them to play PONG on the LCD and other games not yet implemented on the everything-else Teensy.

Here’s another Sun-inspired keeb, but this one has a reverse 10-key layout that matches the DTMF phone dial.

Gesture Controller For Roku And Universal Keyboard Built By UCPLA Dream Team

October 6, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield No comments

The coolest part of this year’s Hackaday Prize is teaming up with four nonprofit groups that outlined real-world challenges to tackle as part of the prize. To go along with this, the Dream Team challenge set out a two-month design and build program with small teams whose members each received a $6,000 stipend to work full time on a specific build.

The work of the Dream Team project is in, and today we’re taking a look at United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles (UCPLA) project which not only designed and built a universal remote for those affected with this condition, but also went to great lengths to make sure that “universal” was built into the software and user experience just as much as it was built into the hardware itself. Join us after the break for a closer look a the project, and to see the team’s presentation video.

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Split Keeb Splits Time Between Desk And Tablet Modes

September 29, 2020 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

A keyboard you build yourself should really be made just for you, and meet your specific needs. If you approach it this way, you will likely break ground and inspire others simply because it’s personalized. Such is the case with [_GEIST_]’s highly-customized lily58, designed to work in two modes — on the desk, and mounted on the back of a tablet.

The lily58, which is a 58-key split with dual OLED footprints, was just a starting point for this build. For tablet mode, where the keyboard is attached to the back of a tablet with hook-and-loop tape, [_GEIST_] created custom plates that double the thumb keys on the back.

We love that there is a PSP thumbstick for mousing on one layer and inputting keystrokes on other layer. But we can’t decide which is our favorite part: the fact that [_GEIST_] threaded it through the bottom of a Kailh Choc switch, or the fact that there’s a Pimoroni Haptic Buzz with a different wave form for each layer. [_GEIST_] also added an acrylic middle plate layer to support quick-change magnetic tenting legs.

Keyboard mods don’t have to be involved to be adopted by others. This modified Dactyl adds custom wrist rest holders and has deeper bottoms that allow for less than perfect wiring.

Via reddit

Adding MIDI To A Mini Synth Is Easy As Pi

September 21, 2020 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

There are a handful of relatively dirt cheap synths out there like the KORG Monotron, but many of them use ribbon controllers that aren’t very precise. Ribbon controllers basically slide pots that you operate with your finger or a stylus. They’re painted to look like piano keys in order to show you approximately where the notes are supposed to be. The Stylophone is another extremely affordable synth that does even less as a synthesizer and uses this type of input. It’s a fun input if you don’t mind imprecision, but can be annoying otherwise.

[schollz] isn’t satisfied to synth this way, so they added MIDI input to their KORG Monotron using a Raspberry Pi and a DAC. Fortunately, the Monotron is quite the hackable little synth, with nice, big, labelled pads on the PCB.

All it really took was a couple of solder joints in the right places, plus a clever Python script. The script listens for MIDI input from a keyboard, and then controls an MCP4725 DAC, which sends voltages to the Monotron. [schollz] wrote a tuning function that computes the FFT of the MIDI tones to find the fundamental frequencies of each to send along to the Monotron. Check it out after the break.

If liquid control is what you’re after but all you have is a keyboard, try making your own ribbon controller.

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Custom Keyboard Goes Split, Gets Thin, Acquires Stained Wood

September 21, 2020 by Donald Papp 23 Comments

The hardware and software required to make DIY keyboards happen has gotten more and more accessible, and that means it’s easier than ever to make one’s ideal input device a reality from the ground up. For [Cameron Sun], his Ellipsis Split mechanical keyboard buildlog details his second effort, refining his original design from lessons learned the first time around. The new keyboard is slim, split into two, and has integrated wrist supports made from stained wood. The painting and wood treatment took a lot of work and patience, but it certainly paid off because the result looks amazing!

Small integrated OLED screen shows the current mode.

When we saw [Cameron]’s first custom keyboard, we admired the unique aluminum case and some nice touches like the physical toggle switches. Those tactile switches allow changing the keyboard to different modes, while also serving as a visual indicator. [Cameron] liked those switches too, but alas they just didn’t fit into the slim new design. However, he’s very happy with swapping modes in software and using a small OLED display as an indicator. What kind of different modes does his keyboard have? There’s Windows mode and Mac mode (which changes some hotkeys) as well as modes that change which keys in the thumb clusters do what (moving the space key to the left for easier gaming, for example.) After all, it’s not just the physical layout that can be customized with a DIY keyboard.

Interested in making your own custom keyboard? Be sure to look into this breakaway keyboard PCB concept before you start, because it just might make your custom build a lot easier.

A Big Computer Needs A Big Keyboard

September 19, 2020 by Al Williams 36 Comments

It seems like many keyboard aficionados have been gravitating towards ever smaller boards, but not [Ren]. He’s mostly completed a 433% keyboard with a whopping 450 distinct keys. Using two off the shelf PCBs and Teensy to control it all, this keyboard means you’ll never need to strain to make some awkward chord.

The PCBs have a diode matrix arrangement for 225 keys, which we would have thought was big enough. After all, a Scrabble board has 225 squares, so we assume that’s why the vendor calls them scrabbleboards. Honestly, we’re jealous someone has the desk space for this monster. We were also thinking what other sorts of switch-like sensors you could use with this board. Imagine a home system, for example, with 225 occupancy sensors, each with its own key you could easily read via USB.

There was a time when building your own keyboard of any sort would have been challenging. But now there’s a cottage industry supplying chips, switches, caps, and PCBs to those looking to craft their own custom input devices. The ready availability of 3D printers has also sparked a minor revolution in custom keyboard enclosures and keycaps.

If you’re a fan of the tiny keyboards, we’ve seen some impressive specimens that might catch your fancy. If nothing else, at least they require less soldering. Especially when they only have seven keys.

Thanks [ptkwilliams] for the tip!