Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

blakesmith.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 136 posts

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#41

Post by ThatPlayer »

Palomides wrote: post #23
jrockway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and this guy did it the hard way. Get a teensy, some switches, diodes, and wire, and read this: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/docs/hand_wi... There is no need to spend any time on the software side of things. It's already been done to death.

even if you want a custom plate, PCB, case, firmware, you can use community-developed web tools like these to do it all: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/ https://kalerator.clueboard.co/ http://builder.swillkb.com/ https://config.qmk.fm/ A neat response to this article would be someone making a keyboard using only these tools.

I've been doing that myself recently. I have a 3d printer, so I took the dxf plate generated by builder.swillkb.com and just extruded it in OpenSCAD a bit for some thickness. 3D printed it, put it together with some screws (the generator even comes with screw hole options), hand wired the switches together, to a Arduino Pro Micro and programmed it with QMK.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#43

Post by coldtea »

Palomides wrote: post #14
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-…

I'm curious why you want modular parts rather than just designing a board that has what you want? Keyboards are surprisingly easy to design now (as seen in this article), and you can design things that would be completely unreasonable for any modular system.

>I'm curious why you want modular parts rather than just designing a board that has what you want?

A design requires an effort (the TFA author worked for 3 months on it) and future changes to it requires extra effort. Plus you need to have the knowledge, the time, and the will to go through all this.

Whereas a modular component could be assembled by anybody, tested, changed to a different format if their needs change or they don't like the first one etc, at a moment's notice.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#44

Post by neonroku »

rolleiflex wrote: post #28

Does anybody know if there’s anything inherent in this that makes it have to be QWERTY in layout, or in shape? What I’m thinking about is to actually make a custom physical user interface. Less of a keyboard and more the bridge of USS Enterprise.

you aren't limited to QWERTY but there are some limitations in what you can send from a USB keyboard. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish you might want to do some of it in the keyboard and part on the computer using AutoHotkey/Hammerspoon.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#45

Post by blakesmith »

mntmn wrote: post #32

I love stuff like this. We made a whole laptop in this spirit, with a custom USB keyboard, optical trackball, motherboard and 3d printed/cnc milled case, also with KiCAD: https://mntmn.com/media/news_md/2019-01-14-status_update_on_...

Whoa, sweet project. Your assembly video is drool worthy cool. I've thought about doing my own laptop some day, but figured I'd work my way up to that difficulty with some other smaller projects to keep learning. Any advice to share for doing a custom laptop?

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#46

Post by marcv81 »

jrockway wrote: post #18
Palomides wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you want modular parts rather than just designing a board that has what you want? Keyboards are surprisingly easy to design now (as seen in this article), and you can design things that would be completely unreasonable for any modular system.

Indeed, and this guy did it the hard way. Get a teensy, some switches, diodes, and wire, and read this: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/docs/hand_wi... There is no need to spend any time on the software side of things. It's already been done to death.

There is no need to spend time on the hardware either, but OP wanted to learn something.

For those who might be interested here is my firmware project: https://github.com/marcv81/umk. I like to think it's more approachable than QMK, at the cost of features.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#47

Post by neonroku »

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…

There are a few keyboards similar to ErgoDox but with less keys:

* https://github.com/kata0510/Lily58

* https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash

This blog shows how the Lily58 designer took the ErgoDox design and removed the keys he found superfluous:

https://yuchi-kbd.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/12/23/214342

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#48

Post by neonroku »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #15
marcinzm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's $255 and doesn't come with any switches from what I can tell. Not the person you're responding to but I've heard good things about the UHK: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/

I didn’t like it, despite waiting a couple of years (I think) for mine to ship. The lack of Esc is just plain stupid and needlessly “special” for a hackers keyboard, especially with zero space constraints. The keys themselves I’m not a fan of, but that’s because nothing beats the buckling spring keys I’m used to - so not counting that against them. Build quality is great, however.

Can't you remap one of the other keys to be escape - I think for those who care keyboard layout is highly personal - I can find somebody has designed a keyboard that looks great and then make layout choices I find very strange. But if the keyboard uses qmk then I can easily fix that.

If you're not happy then build your own - or buy a unicomp board and replace the controller so you get the best of both worlds - buckling spring and programmable keyboard.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#49

Post by jrockway »

neonroku wrote: post #47
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…

There are a few keyboards similar to ErgoDox but with less keys: * https://github.com/kata0510/Lily58 * https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash This blog shows how the Lily58 designer took the ErgoDox design and removed the keys he found superfluous: https://yuchi-kbd.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/12/23/214342

Yeah. I picked the Ergodox because it's basically an off-the-shelf part these days. Order one today, you'll have it on Tuesday. The same is not true of most other keyboards like that.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#50

Post by mncharity »

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 while still not quite working. But I was left thinking "I should get back to this" rather than "never again". Stroking a keycap as a trackpad seemed nice, even already having a touchpoint. Merely touching modifier keys (emacs) rather than having to press them. With a 3D display, I overlaid video of the keyboard, slightly above the screen plane so it was easily seen but only moderately annoying. And thus could overlay a multitouch control panel that doesn't require shifting attention from the screen, or hands from the keyboard. With screen-comparable VR/AR seemingly only a year or three away now, with attendant changes in UI constraints, there seems an opportunity to escape decades-old HID fetters, at least with professional UIs.

Post reply on HN