One Man’s Adventures In Custom Keyboard Development

May 28, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

BlueCube-flat

As a software developer, [suka] spends a lot of time every day in front of a keyboard. He had been trying out different keyboard layouts far less common than even the moderetly obscure Dvorak layout, and after some time decided a custom ergonomic keyboard was what he wanted. His progress of designing his own custom ergonomic keyboard is a fascinating read, made even cooler by the fact these are real, professional-quality keyboards with mechanical switches and custom enclosures.

After starting off with a few USB numpads, [suka] dove in to the world of Cherry switches by crafting his own wing-style keyboard. [suka] works for one of the larger manufacturers of laser-sintering machines, so he was able to create the enclosures for his keybaord – as well as the key caps – fairly easily. The technology behind laser sintering allowed [suka] to create some strange bowl and trough-shaped keyboards before settling on his daily driver, seen above.

The Blue Cube, as [suka] calls it, includes an integrated stand, an integrated IBM trackpoint mouse, and is powered by a Teensy microcontroller. [suka]’s keyboards might not be heafty enough for melee combat like the venerable IBM Model M, but it’s exactly what [suka] wants, and that’s just fine by us.

Auto Dimmer Hacked Into Keyboard Backlight

May 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

keyboard-backlight-auto-adjustment

As the title says, [José Faria] added the ability to adjust his keyboard backlight based on ambient light levels. But that’s just one of the things he did during his hacking extravaganza with this Razer BlackWidow Ultimate.

When he first received the peripheral he didn’t like the blue LEDs used as backlights. So he removed all of them and put in white ones. He doesn’t talk too much about that but we’d image it was a ton of work. The new color was pleasing, but then the ability to adjust their brightness started to irritate him. There are four predefined levels and that’s all you get. Even the GUI which has a slider for adjustment couldn’t go outside of those levels.

His solution was to augment the controller with his own. He patched in an AVR chip to the transistor which controls the low side of the LED circuits. While at it he also noticed that the keyboard case was actually translucent. This let him hide a photosensor inside which automatically adjusts the light levels. But he did it in a way that still allows him to use the original functionality with the flip of a switch. See for yourself after the break.

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Horribly Complicated Electric Guitar Keyboard

April 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

the-email-gutar

Gutarist, hacker, and mustache enthusiast [David Neevel] brought together way too many pieces of hardware in order to use his electric guitar as a computer keyboard.

So let’s dig into the house of cards he built for the project. It starts off with the guitar which has been fitted with an additional pickup to interface with a Roland GR-33 synthesizer pedal. That outputs a MIDI signal, which many hackers would have connected to the computer and parsed with a simple script. But not [David], he connected it to an Arduino via an optisolator. Well that’s not too ridiculous, right? Don’t you think he’ll just parse the MIDI signals and push them to the computer via the Arduino’s USB port? Wrong! He translates the MIDI signals into combinations for a big relay board which is emulating the key matrix of an old USB keyboard. But as you can see in the demo video after the jump it works quite well.

If you’re more of the drumming sort there’s an electric drum set version of this hack too.

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Ask Hackaday: Are We Close To Reinventing The Keyboard For Touchscreens?

March 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 98 Comments

minuum-keyboard

We mourn the loss of the physical keyboard with the advent of tablets. After all, we do a bit of typing getting all of these features posted throughout the week. And we kind of blame tablets for the decline of the netbook industry (we still use a Dell Vostro A90 when not at home). But we’re trying to keep an open mind that we may not need a physical keyboard anymore. If someone can come up with an innovative alternative to the Qwerty layout that we are able to learn and can use with speed and without physical strain we’ll be on board. Our question is, do you think we are close to a screen typing breakthrough?

This question came to mind after seeing the Minuum keyboard shown above. It compresses all of the rows of a Qwerty into a single row, monopolizing less screen space than conventional smartphone input methods. The demo video (embedded after the break) even shows them hacking the concept into a distance sensor and using a graphite-on-paper resistor. Pretty cool. But what happens when you type a word not in the dictionary, like this author’s last name?

You can actually try out the Minuum style thanks to [Zack’s] in-browser demo hack. He’s not affiliated with Minuum, but has done quite a bit of alternative keyboard input work already with his ASETNIOP chorded typing project. It’s another contender for changing how we do things.

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Wooden Teeth For Your USB Keyboard

March 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

wooden-keyboard

We just got an ergonomic keyboard for the first time and absolutely love it. But the look of this keyboard hack has us second guessing ourselves. [Will Pretend] pulled off an absolutely stunning wooden retrofit for his USB keyboard. Be warned, his project log includes 175 photos, and most of them have captions.

He started off by taking apart the original USB keyboard to see what he was working with. Before digging in to the valuable wood stock he cut test pieces using some thin MDF. But once he had a clear plan to get to the end of the project it was full stem ahead.

The keys are not simple Chicklet style overlays, they have depth like you would expect to find on low-grade plastic peripherals. This was accomplished by milling each key, then sending them through the laser cutter to each the letter on top.

Take some time to make your way through the entire project (here’s a thumbnail layout if you get frustrated). Unfortunately [Will] says he doesn’t actually use the keyboard because of grains catching and the keys move around a bit too much. But it does work.

Hacking The Right Side Of A Keyboard Completely Off

March 23, 2013 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

hacking-the-right-side-of-your-keyboard

The form factor of this keyboard just doesn’t look right. What’s missing? Oh, the numpad has been completely removed! We use our numpad almost exclusively (especially when coding) so it’s a little hard to figure out why [Ludw] did this. His only mention of motive is that he wanted the mouse closer to the main part of the keyboard and that he didn’t use the numpad. No matter what the reason, we still think he did an amazing job of giving new life to the older keyboard.

It started out as a plain old beige Cherry G80-3000 keyboard. After cracking open the case [Ludw] carefully traced out the connections between the key matrix and the PCB which provides the USB connection. This is because the controller is mounted over on the part of the PCB he his about to remove. Before making the cuts he desoldered all seventeen switches (these can be reused to fabricate a new keyboard, or add switches to various projects). He then lopped off the depopulated substrate and used point-to-point soldering to reconnect the controller. A bit of case alteration removed the extra space while also reusing the nicely molded edges. A clean and tidy paint job finishes the hack.

[via Reddit]

Pair Of Musical Hacks Use Sensor Arrays As Keyboards

February 20, 2013 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

sensor-driven-musical-keyboards

This pair of musical keyboard hacks both use light to detect inputs. The pair of tips came in on the same day, which sparks talk of consipiracy theory here at Hackaday. Something in the weather must influence what types of projects people take on because we frequently see trends like this one. Video of both projects is embedded after the jump.

On the left is a light-sensitive keyboard which [Kaziem] is showing off. In this image he’s rolling a marble around on the surface. As it passes over the Cadmium Sulfide sensors (which are arranged in the pattern of white and black keys from a piano keyboard) the instrument plays pitches based on the changing light levels. [Thanks Michael via Make]

To the right is [Lex’s] proximity sensor keyboard. It uses a half-dozen Infrared proximity sensor which pick up reflected light. He calls it a ‘quantised theremin’ and after seeing it in action we understand why. The overclocked Raspberry Pi playing the tones reacts differently based on distance from the keyboard itself, and hand alignment with the different sensors.

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