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Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

blakesmith.me

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Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#121

Post by mncharity »

jkestner wrote: post #113
mncharity wrote: post #50

Has anyone seen keyboards with non-traditional touch surfaces? Such as trackpad keycaps? Backstory: My fingers slide smoothly across my ThinkPad laptop keyboard, so I was playing with optical hand tracking (with a surface mirror to better track touch) to make the entire keyboard (and surrounding laptop) into a multitouch surface. There were occlusion and jitter issues, even with fingernail markers, and I set it aside…

Yes. https://vimeo.com/258421095 It's possible to turn a single keycap into a touch surface with the mechanics of a TrackPoint, and mapping to VR. Look for a product this year.

Oh, nifty. I didn't find a page to track keyboard status, but here's http://www.tactuallabs.com/ .

A depth camera can give rough finger height[1], and multi-camera care and kludgery can do even better, but, that last little bit, of high-speed high-reliability millimeter-ish is-it-touching-the-key-yet/still-or-not contact determination, is something I've not seen well addressed.

Given this unicorn-like keyboard, I wistfully note that having pressure sensing would be very nice too...

FWIW, I also note one way a company can easily support linux, often overlooked, is to provide only an as-is unsupported binary-blob library with any secret sauce, and leave it to the community to link it, wire it to IO systems, and deal with OS variants. The payoff, for a product throttled in part by community innovation and/or adoption bootstrap, is that while linux is often a small market, it's a highly-disproportionately innovative one. For this keyboard, the envisioned market may be mostly gaming, and thus mostly Windows. But it might be a youtube "look at my neat hack" video, which prompts some game dev to support it.

[1] https://frl.nyu.edu/multi-touch-with-realsense-camera/

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#123

Post by sleepybrett »

jrockway wrote: post #19
snazz wrote: post #11

For anyone who’s tried both: are big keyboards with lots of modifiers or little keyboards with “layers” more comfortable and functional for you? I currently have a full-size mechanical PC keyboard and am debating buying a Planck.

I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j). Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good…

get a kinesis advantage. The ergodox is just a shitty flat copy.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#124

Post by sleepybrett »

lexicality wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j). Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good…

It's interesting, I use a kinesis advantage which has a pretty much identical layout and I use the bottom row of keys and thumb 1u thumb cluster keys regularly. In fact I now vastly prefer the fact that the arrow keys are so close to the home row. That said - the kinesis is curved which probably makes it a lot easier to get your fingers to things?

The ergodox is shit, it's just a flat kinesis but they didn't bother to understand why the advantage uses wells.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#125

Post by jkestner »

mncharity wrote: post #121
jkestner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. https://vimeo.com/258421095 It's possible to turn a single keycap into a touch surface with the mechanics of a TrackPoint, and mapping to VR. Look for a product this year.

Oh, nifty. I didn't find a page to track keyboard status, but here's http://www.tactuallabs.com/ . A depth camera can give rough finger height[1], and multi-camera care and kludgery can do even better, but, that last little bit, of high-speed high-reliability millimeter-ish is-it-touching-the-key-yet/still-or-not contact determination, is something I've not seen well addressed. Given this unicorn-like keyboard, I wis…

Yeah, this does that last millimeter in Z. It can do pressure, at least by virtue of knowing the force needed to move the keycaps and how far they've been pressed.

An SDK has to be part of this. I agree that Linux support will be good to have, especially if there are people like you to play with it. We should talk.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#126

Post by PurpleRamen »

samstave wrote: post #8

I have a design wish for people who make things like this: “row modules” Basically, as an example - i wouldnt be fond of the size of that spacebar, and would like other modules. What if each horizontal row of the standard length on a qwerty were its own module, and you can snap several together to make the board you want. Want a touchpad? Snap it to the base or side. Want a touchbar oled strip: snap it to the top. 9-…

Rows can be very different between different layouts. The modularity of a generic row-module would be somewhat limited to specific layouts. Additionally it would enhance cost and complexity significant, while reducing certain practical aspects of such a design. I don't think todays technology is really there yet for a good enough solution.

If you wanna see a step into this direction you can look at the "Ultimate Hacking Keyboard". They have a collection of modules to be attached on the side of the keyboard. You will also see some of the problems of such a design there.

Personally I would aim more for single-key-modules. Make lego-like parts for a keyboard where each single key can be arranged on a board as you wish, like with lego-bricks. Does also scale far better across all used layouts, because at the end you have only a handful module-types which can be used for all designs equally. Makes mass-production cheaper on the long run.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#127

Post by kakwa_ »

Reminds me of the time I rewired an old Mac SE keyboard to an USB keyboard controller.

Basically, I took an USB keyboard controller from a cheap secondhand Dell keyboard, reversed its matrix, and then rewired every combination to the USB controller board using a wires peeled off from an IDE connector.

Very time intensive, and to say the truth, not really working well in the end, but, hey, I was a student at the time.

It was far less ambitious than the titled project, but here are the pictures:

http://blog.kakwalab.ovh/IMG_6920.CR2.jpg

http://blog.kakwalab.ovh/IMG_6921.CR2.jpg

(yes, it's a mess).

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#128

Post by jrockway »

sleepybrett wrote: post #123
jrockway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j). Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good…

get a kinesis advantage. The ergodox is just a shitty flat copy.

I'll pass. I use a lot of custom QMK features, like the ability to position the two halves wherever I want, and don't like Cherry Blue and Brown keyswitches. (I'm using a combination of Novelkeys Box Royal and Hako Royal Clears to weight the pinky keys slightly less, much like the Topre Realforce boards I used before switching to an Ergodox.)

It is not perfect, of course, but ultimately I don't really care about the well. The keyboard being flat is not what made typing uncomfortable for me; your mileage may vary. I would switch back to Topre switches instantly, though. I like the way they feel. Someday I will figure out how to stick the mechanism into a Cherry keyswitch form factor.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#130

Post by brokenmachine »

jrockway wrote: post #19
snazz wrote: post #11

For anyone who’s tried both: are big keyboards with lots of modifiers or little keyboards with “layers” more comfortable and functional for you? I currently have a full-size mechanical PC keyboard and am debating buying a Planck.

I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j). Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good…

I have an Ergodox and love it and use all the keys.

I have those 1u keys on the thumbs assigned as media keys but I could do without them if I had to as well.

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