Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#2After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard, I felt like this needed to be shared. I nearly built something like the Clicks for myself but the closer I got the worse it seemed, ergonomically. Not only that the Clicks key layout only has shift on one side and it doesn't have a backlight.
Some background: I have been shopping around for a bluetooth keyboard to use for thumb typing for the last few months. I have a book to edit and a newborn that is always sleeping on my chest. I tried a few bluetooth keyboards from Amazon but they were all garbage.
Eventually I found the T-Keyboard and have been really pleased by it. This is the keyboard from the T-Deck with a little 160x40 screen attached to it. The screen allows you to see what you're typing on the device without looking at your phone. It boots in half a second which means switching back and forth is lightning fast. If I'm typing a few words, I stick to my touchscreen. I'm editing so there's a lot of selecting text to copy / paste / annotate which is also touchscreen work. When I need to add a new paragraph or more, I set my phone down and pick this thing up to type with.
It really is fantastic. If you decide to pick one up, you may want to run my fork which fixes a bunch of the usability issues: https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/tree/bleeding_edge
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#3lilygo has been killing it for a while now with great small embedded devices.
The keyboard plus ultra small typing screen is a super neat idea.
I do wish the key card here also had the pointer pad too, but still a great offering. seen a bunch of these but usually without case, and the price here (This post also is a sad reminder that I haven't used or been even semi fluent in my Twiddler for nearing a decade now. Now that was the ideal ubiquitous computer keyboard, if you can overcome the arduous learning curve.
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#4After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard, I felt like this needed to be shared. I nearly built something like the Clicks for myself but the closer I got the worse it seemed, ergonomically. Not only that the Clicks key layout only has shift on one side and it doesn't have a backlight. Some background: I have been shopping around for a bluetooth keyboard to use for thumb typing for the la…
> After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard
Care to link those? I've been poking around some of this stuff and have a Lilygo T-Display and T-Embed en route, would be nice to see other more knowledgable folks' opinion on the products, dev experience, etc.
(edit, there isnt much in a search for 'lilygo' so I surmise it's this fella https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862848 )
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#5Great but Lilygo should dedicate some of their efforts into writing documentation, even it it means dialing down the development of new products. I have several personal projects involving some Lilygo products and they are taking forever simply because I spent 95% of the time reverse engineering whatever examples they have and try to make some sense of what it is I'm actually holding in my hands. In most cases you don't even get a datasheet.
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#6Even if this keyboard is as good as a real BB back in the golden years
using it on an iPhone is a mess.
BBin the golden years was fully optimized for operating with a keyboard.
iPhone is optimized for being a touch screen driven system. Those conflict.
I tried for a good time to develop something very similar years ago, but 1) I wasn't able to find financing and 2) (more importantly) trying to write a UI Shell for Android that worked like the original BB was perhaps not impossible, but way past my and the people with me skill level.
Now what we need is to find an Android device that can run the classic BB software. (Yeah they made their own Android BB, but it sucked)
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#7Great but Lilygo should dedicate some of their efforts into writing documentation, even it it means dialing down the development of new products. I have several personal projects involving some Lilygo products and they are taking forever simply because I spent 95% of the time reverse engineering whatever examples they have and try to make some sense of what it is I'm actually holding in my hands. In most cases you do…
Honestly, this isn't the case - at least in my experience - every product I've bought from them has come with a pinout diagram that is also duplicated on github. Sure, getting the hardware up and running is challenging, and sometimes the examples are a bit arcane or have weird omissions in terms of illustrating the device's capabilities, but it's a booster pack compared to designing and programming similar embedded hardware from scratch.
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#8After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard, I felt like this needed to be shared. I nearly built something like the Clicks for myself but the closer I got the worse it seemed, ergonomically. Not only that the Clicks key layout only has shift on one side and it doesn't have a backlight. Some background: I have been shopping around for a bluetooth keyboard to use for thumb typing for the la…
The problem I have with the blackberry keyboards is the omission of commonly used linux symbols such as tilde - how do you cope with that? Or perhaps I am missing a trick? I've resorted to salvaging Psion 5 keyboards and rolling my own hardware as the result.
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#9lilygo has been killing it for a while now with great small embedded devices. The keyboard plus ultra small typing screen is a super neat idea. I do wish the key card here also had the pointer pad too, but still a great offering. seen a bunch of these but usually without case, and the price here ( This post also is a sad reminder that I haven't used or been even semi fluent in my Twiddler for nearing a decade now. No…
Check out tindie - there is a solder party blackberry keyboard with a track pad. No display. If the display is important to you, then look at the TTGO-deck - a larger device but it has both keyboard & pointer.
Re: Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
#10I know this is more of a hacker tool than an end-user product, but I wish more Bluetooth keyboards used their USB port not just to charge, but also to become a wired USB keyboard when plugged in. It's rare to need a wired keyboard, but it's nice for those times when you need to twiddle a BIOS setting or bootstrap a Bluetooth pairing flow.