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Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

blakesmith.me

91–100 of 136 posts

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#91

What is it like typing on a keyboard that's just a grid? Every keyboard I've used has had each row be shifted slightly which seems to make touch typing easier.

I find typing on a grid much more comfortable and pleasant than typing on a traditional staggered layout.

As an experiment, place your fingers on the home row and naturally curl them out/up or in/down and see how straight or curved the path they follow is. For me, on a normal keyboard, I find that the buttons above the home row are positioned well for my fingers but for the ones below, my fingers naturally curl over the gap between the keys, meaning I have to also bend sideways. With a grid I can press both the keys above and the ones below without any sideways motion (for the four keys on each hand above and below the home row testing keys).

Nowadays I use a kinesis advantage, though, which has not only grid layout but also has them in a curved height to more naturally let your fingers reach the rows without any additional movements and I love it. But even on a flat keyboard, I find a grid works better for me.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but do whatever is riskier and costlier first.

Shouldn't it be riskier & cheaper first? That way if you fuck up you haven't wasted your expensive components.

Components are not wasted or used up by being soldered to a board.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#94
post #17

This project looks nicer than most first efforts. Some random tips for anyone who wants to do something similar, with reservations for that it has been awhile: 1. Get a through hole supported usb connector instead of a pure smd one, since the latter likes to fall off. 2. I would avoid routing under the switches for durability, this might just be superstition though. 3. You can route the x and y of the matrix on diffe…

> 7. Solder in order of cost and success rate.

I would recommend that if you're new to surface mount, to get a couple of SMD practice boards so you can exercise your skills and get a feel for what will be hard/risky and what will be easy/repairable. They're a few dollars online.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#95
post #52

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.

I can chime in here. I've been on a quest for the last 18 months for an apple layout mech keyboard. I thought I found one in the z70 pro board, but it's just subtly off. I want 4 keys to the left of space, and 5 to the right. I don't need both up and down arrows, just one there. The first person to build a "row" based multi layout platform will really start to hit the right spot because some people would want a funct…

Hmm, 4 keys left of space and 5 to right is a really specific requirement. My Filco TKL JIS(Japanese Layout) has this and I made it fully reprogrammable using the Pegasus Hoof from here: http://bathroomepiphanies.com/controllers/

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#96
This may be irrelevant, but I've long wondered, do we really need the buttons at all. Couldn't we just have a "sensory board", where each individual could initialize the board using their hand movement / finger press patterns to individual letters and/or words based on probabilities.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#97
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 haven’t tried both. Nor am I a keyboard hardware enthusiast. I have just spent some time modifying my keyboard through software (Linux X Server). I don’t get the apparent fascination that (mech) keyboard enthusiasts have with small keyboards. I can understand moving or removing the keypad since it displaces the mouse (then again, “don’t use the mouse!”), but beyond that I don’t see the appeal except for the aesthet…

With most mechanical keyboards I’ve encountered the FN key is fully programmable, along with every other key on the keyboard. Typically rather than having the functionality hard coded the FN key will activate a second layer, it’s similar to how shift activated a layer of uppercase characters, but with different functionality.

On mine I have a key that flips into a symbols layer, placing characters commonly used in programming either on or close to the home row, and flips hjkl into vim style cursor keys. I’ve also got another layer on a different key which disables almost all my customisations and turns it into a standard qwerty keyboard for gaming.

If you’re deep into layout customisations via X I suspect you’d really like a decent mechanical with customisable firmware, and probably a few spare keys for mapping to layer shifts.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#98

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 could make it whatever shape you want. Then program it to emit whatever usb key codes you want (there are existing libraries to do this quite easily). This one happens to emit standard qwerty key codes, but there are many more that do other things. For example, there are standard key codes to launch a browser or the calculator (and some keyboards have buttons to do that too). You could also make it emulate any ki…

My Ergodox is configured so that hitting a particular key switches hjkl to mouse control, with clicks on the other hand. I can’t say I use it often, but it’s nice for times when you just want to click a single thing and then get back to typing.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#99
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be riskier & cheaper first? That way if you fuck up you haven't wasted your expensive components.

Components are not wasted or used up by being soldered to a board.

They certainly can be if you're not very good at desoldering. Especially BGA parts which require laborious re-balling for reuse.

Re: Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch

#100
post #96

This may be irrelevant, but I've long wondered, do we really need the buttons at all. Couldn't we just have a "sensory board", where each individual could initialize the board using their hand movement / finger press patterns to individual letters and/or words based on probabilities.

There have been a couple of attempts at this: projection keyboards, Magic Leap. The technology is fine but the learning required to type on something invisible is considerable.
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