yesterday at 3:47 AM
A while back I was frustrated when wanting to buy a keyboard that there were no triangle-shaped keyboards or circle-shaped keyboards. This lack of peculiar keyboard shapes gave me the idea to make a keyboard that could be reconfigurable into any shape my heart desired. I’m still working on the firmware and making more keys but I wanted to share my progress so far. Heres the source if anyone’s interested in how I made it: https://github.com/notaroomba/keybytes
today at 6:37 AM
Just a small suggestion but... maybe re-record your demo without giant floodlights on your desk? :(
today at 8:05 AM
What's wrong with the lights? I like a well-lit video.
today at 5:36 AM
I like the idea but I could only find an image of two keys. It would be great to see a demo of a full layout. With only two keys it's a very early POC and hardly a keyboard.
Does communication work well and feel snappy with a full set of keys? How is the structural integrity of a full one? Can it be easily moved around? That type of questions could easily make this unusable at scale.
today at 5:46 AM
I am waiting on some key switches to make more keys (5 in total), but for now I just wanted to show the progress on the mechanical/electrical side. I don’t have enough PCBs for a full set of keys yet, but when the key switches arrive and I assemble the 3 other boards I’ll let you know how it goes :D
today at 6:50 AM
Looking forward to seeing it!
What's the production cost of this per key?
today at 8:18 AM
> Can it be easily moved around?
I would assume you could have a custom support the keys rest on, that itself is split eg in the middle, so you can easily split the whole keyboard and have it stored in a compact way (trading length for depth).
today at 8:32 AM
good idea! the other day was doing a roundup on keyboards to see whats new and got a striking realization, how nobody has ever slapped a nvme slot into on the back/core part of the enclosure to use as external drive since lot of us comute everyday with extra peripherals
today at 7:13 AM
The I2C has limit of 127 of different addresses. Also there can be I2C hang, especially when there is that many slaves on the bus.
Maybe using CAN is better.
today at 8:09 AM
How small do CAN transceivers get?
today at 8:30 AM
Some MCU can have integrated CAN transceiver
>https://www.nxp.com/products/LPC11C00
today at 8:29 AM
If the I2C open-collector bus works well enough, the same bus will work fine for CAN. There is no need to comply with the CAN spec.
today at 7:56 AM
I'd suggest also adding blank modules without a switch on them for empty space on the keyboard (for example around arrow keys), that would still provide the interconnect to adjacent keys. Cool project.
today at 8:19 AM
I like the idea, but ergonomic keyboards are usually not perfectly columnar.
today at 8:32 AM
Gotcha! Just in time before he scales things up to consider the impact of not having column comms.
today at 8:14 AM
I'm not sure if I have a use case for this but on the technical aspects this is so cool. Those magnetic snaps made me grin!
today at 3:46 AM
This is awesome!
How does the rigidity of the keyboard hold up with many keys and what's the cost of the materials at higher order quantity?
today at 5:08 AM
Thank you!!
It’s really rigid with 2 keys so far but I have yet to test with longer configurations. At a higher order quantity, each key comes out to be around 6 USD but I’m trying to minimize that as much as possible with future revisons!
today at 5:41 AM
Something similar: https://youtu.be/_u8gV643214
The keys are attached to a board so it can be in any orientation
today at 4:56 AM
Sometimes my keyboards get dropped and lose a keycap or two, but never anything serious. If this is dropped on the floor, my trusty keyboard will turn into a bag of puzzle bits, right in the middle of heated gameplay or a meeting...
today at 5:07 AM
The magnets are strong enough that most of it should survive lol. I will be doing drop tests to test that theory out soon
today at 4:27 AM
This is a really neat idea for a macro keyboard. If it supported staggered rows and row heights, not to mention structural rigidity it would be good for everyday use too.
today at 5:10 AM
Thank you! I am currently thinking about adding those in the next revision and it would definitely make it more practical.
today at 4:32 AM
Is there a mouse module? Can you connect in a "staggered" manner rather than in a linear grid?
today at 5:11 AM
There isn’t a mouse module yet, but I am going to make more modules that include screens, finger print sensors, and I’ll add in a mouse one too :D. Currently there isn’t support for a staggered manner but I am going to work on it for the next revision.
today at 8:07 AM
This is cool, but wouldn't it cost more than $2k for a 104-key keyboard? I can't imagine these PCBs having a final price of less than $20 each.
today at 4:01 AM
This is very cool.
It needs spacers / extensions so it can be laid out as desired.
today at 4:37 AM
I looked over the PCB and schematic and it looks well polished. Not a first draft obviously.
I sort of don’t get the 4x I2C busses. I’m probably missing something obvious but it isn’t immediately apparent how the units all have addressing worked out.
today at 5:26 AM
Thank you!
The 4x I2C busses were mainly there to reduce parasitic capacitance and also allows me to know where each key is physically relative to each other in software. I’m still working on the firmware for it, but currently the plan is for each of the keys to remember its “parent”, the neighbor that is closest to the main board, and forward events repeatedly to the main board.
today at 3:44 AM
I’ve wondered when someone would do this (which gets rid of the annoyances of scanning).
The real breakthrough would be reprogrammable key legends in something like e-ink.
today at 4:24 AM
Now give them all wheels so they can rearrange themselves on my desk
today at 6:58 AM
Was looking in the comments for this^
today at 4:07 AM
Very cool, would really like one
today at 3:56 AM
this is extremely cool. would love to see full board
today at 7:46 AM
[flagged]
today at 7:39 AM
Non-viable product. I would NOT buy this.
- How much does it cost? Sell price, not BoM price. I expect something like $10'000 for a full 104-key layout.
- How heavy would it be?
- Can you lift a 104-key layout from the table without it breaking in 2 (or more) pieces? Can you even lift or move a 40% layout with one hand?
- How do you arrange it in a non-ortholinear layout? If you can't, then anyone can just buy an ordinary ortholinear for $100 and switch layouts in software.
- How does the spacebar key look like? Enter key? Shift? I can't type if those big keys aren't big.
- How do you make spaces between key groups?
- There are a lot of pogo pin connections. It's statistically impossible for all of them to work. Is there any redundancy for those connections? Alternate signal paths with automatic rerouting? Any debugging tools/indicators to find where the bad connections are?
- If you have a MCU in every key, and at that price, I would expect them to have a mini-display in the keycap plus lots of other fancy features.
- How about automatic function assignment for each key based on it's location? Can it do that? If not, then any drop on the floor becomes a half-hour puzzle-solving problem.
today at 8:14 AM
I think not-a-keyboard is probably the better use case. A modular plug and play, configurable keypad would be pretty useful for sim enthusiasts or various workstation uses. You could solve the "picking up" problem by putting the modules on a baseplate.
today at 8:04 AM
These are great points, however, who said anything about buying a 100% keyboard in this style, or buying anything at all? I didn’t see a sales page, so it’s likely not intended as an off-the-shelf product.