Create a custom 3D printed shortcut keyboard for design and other complex programs you work in.

Read more on MAKE

The post Making Your Own Custom Shortcut Keyboard appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Create a custom 3D printed shortcut keyboard for design and other complex programs you work in.

Read more on MAKE

The post Making Your Own Custom Shortcut Keyboard appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

You’re not cool unless you have a mechanical keyboard. Case in point: if you were to somehow acquire an identical keyboard to the one I used to type this, it would set you back at least seven hundred dollars. Yes, it’s mechanical (Topre), and yes, I’m cooler than you. Of course, you can’t be as cool as me, but you can build your own mechanical keyboard. [Robin] is, I presume, a pretty cool dude so he built his own keyboard. It’s the amazing shortcut keyboard, and it can be programmed graphically.

The idea for this keyboard came when [Robin] was studying as an engineer. We assume this is code for wearing out the Escape key on AutoCAD, but many other software packages have the same problem. The solution to [Robin]’s problem was a shortcut keypad, a 3 by 4 matrix of Cherry switches that could be programmed for any task.

The design of this keyboard started out as an Adafruit Trellis matrix keypad. This was combined with some software written in Processing that assigned macros to each button. This was a sufficient solution, but the switches in the Adafruit trellis look squishy. These are not the right switches for someone who craves a soft snap under every fingertip. It’s not the keyboard of someone who desires the subtle thickness of laser etched PBT keycaps. The Adafruit keypad doesn’t have the graceful lines of a fully sculpted set of keycaps. Oh my god, it’s doubleshot.

[Robin]’s completed keyboard has gone through a few revisions, but in the end, he settled on PCB-mounted switches and a very clever 3D printed standoff system to hold an Arduino Pro Micro in place. The enclosure, too, is 3D printed, and the end result is a completely custom keyboard that’s perfect for mashing key combos.

You can check out a video of this keyboard in action below.

There’s a lot of reasons you might want to emulate the keyboard on your Commodore 64. The ravages of time and dust may have put the original keyboard out of order, or perhaps you need to type in a long program and don’t fancy pecking away with the less-than-stellar feedback of the standard keys. [podstawek] has come up with the solution: a Commodore 64 keyboard emulator that works over serial.

It’s a simple concept, but one that works well. A Python script accepts incoming keypresses or pre-typed text, then converts them into a 6-bit binary code, which is sent to an Arduino over the serial connection. The Arduino uses the 6-bit code as addresses for an MT8808 crosspoint switch.

The MT8808 is essentially an 8×8 matrix of controllable switches, which acts as the perfect tool to interface with the C64’s 8×8 keyboard matrix. Hardware wise, this behaves as if someone were actually pressing the keys on the real keyboard. It’s just replacing the original key switches with an electronic version controlled by the Arduino.

[podstawek] already has the setup working on Mac, and it should work on Linux and Windows too. There’s a little more to do yet – modifying the script to allow complex macros and to enable keys to be held – so check out the Github if you want to poke around in the source. Overall it’s a tidy, useful hack to replace the stock keyboard.

The C64 remains a popular platform for hacking — it’s even had a Twitter client since 2009.

[DastardlyLabs] saw a video about converting a PS/2 keyboard to Bluetooth and realized he didn’t have any PS/2 keyboards anymore. So he pulled the same trick with a USB keyboard. Along the way, he made three videos explaining how it all works.

The project uses a stock DuinoFun USB mini host shield with a modification to allow it to work on 5V. An Arduino mini pro provides the brains. A FT-232 USB to serial board is used to program the Arduino. A standard Bluetooth module has to have HID firmware installed. [Dastardly] makes a homemade daughterboard–er, shield–to connect it to the Arduino.

The result is a nice little sandwich with a USB plug, a Bluetooth antenna, and some pins for reprogramming if necessary. Resist the urge to solder the Bluetooth board in–since it talks on the same port as the Arduino uses for programming, you’ll have to remove it before uploading new code.

If you need help reprogramming the HC-05 Bluetooth module, we’ve covered that before. This project drew inspiration from [Evan’s] similar project for PS/2 keyboards.

Do any of you stay awake at night agonizing over how the keytar could get even cooler? The 80s are over, so we know none of us do. Yet here we are, [James Cochrane] has gone out and turned a HP ScanJet Keytar for no apparent reason other than he thought it’d be cool. Don’t bring the 80’s back [James], the world is still recovering from the last time.

Kidding aside (except for the part of not bringing the 80s back), the keytar build is simple, but pretty cool. [James] took an Arduino, a MIDI interface, and a stepper motor driver and integrated it into some of the scanner’s original features. The travel that used to run the optics back and forth now produce the sound; the case of the scanner provides the resonance. He uses a sensor to detect when he’s at the end of the scanner’s travel and it instantly reverses to avoid collision.

A off-the-shelf MIDI keyboard acts as the input for the instrument. As you can hear in the video after the break; it’s not the worst sounding instrument in this age of digital music. As a bonus, he has an additional tutorial on making any stepper motor a MIDI device at the end of the video.

If you don’t have an HP ScanJet lying around, but you are up to your ears in surplus Commodore 64s, we’ve got another build you should check out.

There are a ton of applications that we use that can benefit from keyboard shortcuts, and we use ’em religiously. Indeed, there are some tasks that we do so often that they warrant their own physical button. And the only thing cooler than custom keyboards are custom keyboards that you’ve made yourself.

Which brings us to [Dan]’s four-button Cherry MX USB keypad. It’s not really all that much more than four keyswitch footprints and an AVR ATmega32u4, but that plus some software is all you really need. He programs the Arduino bootloader into the chip, and then he’s using the Arduino Leonardo keyboard libraries. Bam! Check out the video below.

We see this design much more as a demo or collection of building-blocks than necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution. You might need five buttons, or want a different layout, or… It’s all open-source, so go nuts. And you’re not limited to key-clicks either — mouse buttons or even multiple scripted actions are within easy reach.

Building a special-function USB keypad or gaming device used to be hard work. But today between hardware and software design availability, it’s child’s play. Whether you need a footboard, a single-handed chording keyboard, or even just to update an old typewriter, the ability to control the input device that we use for eight hours per day is liberating. Experiment!

A custom keyboard could be right at your fingertips, so why are you still using that basic keyboard that came with your computer?

Read more on MAKE

The post 8 Crazy Keyboards That Will Trick Out Your Typing appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

What’s the fastest keyboard? Few subjects are as divisive in the geek community. Clicky or squishy? QWERTY or Dvorak? Old-school IBM or Microsoft Natural? The answer: none of the above.

The fastest normal-keyboard typists (Dvorak or Qwerty) can get around 220 words per minute (wpm) in bursts. That sounds fast, and it’s a lot faster than we type, but that’s still below the minimum speed allowable for certified court reporters or closed captioners. The fastest court reporters clock in around 350 to 375 wpm for testimony. But they do this by cheating — using a stenotype machine. We’ll talk more about stenography in a minute, but first a hack.

The Hack

[Kevin Nygaard] bought a used Stentura 200 stenotype machine off Ebay and it wasn’t working right, so naturally he opened it up to see if he could fix it. A normal stenotype operates stand-alone and prints out on paper tape, but many can also be connected to an external computer. [Kevin]’s machine had a serial output board installed, but it wasn’t outputting serial, so naturally he opened it up to see if he could fix it. In the end, he bypassed the serial output by soldering on an Arduino and writing a few lines of code.

The serial interface board in [Kevin]’s machine was basically a set of switches that made contact with the keys as they get pressed, and a few shift registers to read the state of these switches out over a serial connection. [Kevin] tapped into this line, read the switch state out into his Arduino, and then transmitted the correct characters to his computer via the Arduino’s serial over USB. (Video demo) As hardware types like to say, the rest is a simple matter of software.

Stenography 101

We’re big keyboard lovers. Maybe one third of Hackaday’s content is typed out on one or another vintage IBM Model M. No self-respecting geek who types for a living doesn’t have a near-religious keyboard preference. [Kevin]’s simple hack brought to our attention that we’ve never covered stenography. (Not steganography.) Frankly, we’re ashamed, and we’re fixing that right now.

The secret to the speed of steno is the use of a chorded, anatomically designed keyboard with an accompanying phonetic mnemonic shorthand system. Basically, one mashes down keys that correspond to sound of the word, and they’re interpreted according to a mnemonic system with a user-extensible dictionary. In short, it’s machine-assisted typing.

Many words are a single chord, and there are millions of possible chords, so there’s plenty of open space to add one’s own key combinations as the need arises.

But because stenography is a niche market, and because steno machines are designed to be used professionally by closed-captioners and court reporters, stenotype machines cost thousands of dollars. The software that runs them isn’t cheap either and is written for a very specific purpose, and is of course proprietary. In short, the market caters only to professionals, and there’s not much room for the steno enthusiast, until recently.

Plover: Open Software

Plover is free and open-source stenography software (Github), and is aiming to be the steno gateway drug. Specifically, Plover can turn a normal keyboard (with n-key rollover to support chording) into an emulated steno keyboard through software, allowing entry into the world of stenography for a hundred bucks instead of a few thousand.

Plover will also work with professional stenotypes that support serial output, like the one that [Kevin] modified that sent us down this rabbit hole in the first place. So once you’re hooked on steno, you can use your hard-earned dictionary with improved hardware if you want.

Note that the n-key rollover requirement is binding, and that’s where the $100 comes from. You can easily chord 20 keys on a stenotype machine because each finger has two buttons underneath it, and the chording systems are designed to take extensive use of hitting them two at a time. Some gaming keyboards have sufficient rollover capability, but it’s not a feature that’s demanded by the unwashed masses. In short, n-key rollover is going to cost you a little bit, or you can DIY. (Hint, hint.)

If you’ve played around with alternative keyboards (or just keyboard mappings) before, you’ll know that the Achilles’ Heel is how they handle the command and control characters that your favorite editor or IDE requires you to use. We had this hand-held device that made it nearly impossible to type control-x control-s, so it was goodbye keyboard or goodbye Emacs.

This is not a problem with a steno device, because you can define your own chord mappings. But you don’t have to stop with control characters or even Unicode. Map chords to commonly-used variable names. Map chords to entire flow-control structure skeletons (if-then-else). Think of steno strokes as being typing macros and you’ll get the idea.

The lead behind Plover, [Mirabai Knight], has a ton of info on getting started, including a live browser demo (a must-try!) and a video demonstrating Python (among other things) where you can see how chording works with coding. If you want to see how [Mirabai] transcribes live for clients using Plover and Vim, this video and its side pane are a great peek behind the curtains.

Open Steno Project: The Hardware

The Open Steno Project is an umbrella project on top of Plover to reduce the hardware and theory-learning hurdles. They list three keyboard options.

The Ergodox seems just to be a fancy ergonomic split keyboard, but one that would be particularly suited to stenography.

The Stenosaurus (Silicon-Valley-style empty sign-up page alert) looks sexy. That Stenosaurus is run by [Josh Lifton], the original coder heavyweight behind Plover who recently crowdfunded a batch of lightweight and quiet keyswitches, gives us hope. But hope and $4.35 will buy you a double-pump soy vanilla-whip latte; we like to see work in progress.

In contrast, the Stenoboard is an open project with actual designs, a 3D-printed case, code, and project examples. The firmware runs on an Arduino. StenoSpeak, an application based on the Stenoboard just won the second prize at the AT&T Connect Ability Hackathon, demonstrating that there’s other reasons to learn steno besides transcription. If you’re looking for some prior art for your own implementation, or a place to jump in and contribute, Stenoboard is a good bet.

Conclusion

We’re surprised that we found so few DIY projects on the steno front. The hardware is fundamentally simple, with obvious directions for improvements and personalizations. A stenotype is extremely costly to purchase, but cheap to DIY. The software side is well-established and open source. In short, the ball is set up for a quick hardware field goal.

On Hackaday.io and the blog, there are tons of projects for making improved keyboards — many of them are chorded. But so far all of them ignore the stenotype, the current state of the art in high speed typing that’s been around since the late 1800s. We want to see this change, and we think the tide is high and the planets aligned and so on. Fly, winged monkeys, fly!

After two and a half years of work and dozens of prototypes, Kaia Dekker and Jesse Vincent have launched Keyboardio Model 01 on Kickstarter: an heirloom-grade mechanical keyboard designed for serious typists.

As you’ll see from the video presentation below, the Model 01 is not just a keyboard. Kaia and Jesse actually re-envisioned the way we type to make it feel great. On top of that it has a beautiful hardwood enclosure and it ships with source code and a screwdriver. The Model 01’s firmware is a regular Arduino sketch you can explore and change yourself.

The project reached its target in the first few hours and you have a few more days to get one!

In the meantime they also joined the Arduino at Heart Program to make it fully customizable with the Arduino IDE:

We’ve built the Model 01 around the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller that Arduino uses in the Arduino Leonardo. Early on, we figured we’d eventually switch away to a cheaper ARM microcontroller, but then we fell in love with just how easy Arduino makes it for a new programmer to get up to speed. For all intents and purposes, the Model 01’s brain is a regular Arduino. You can update your keyboard from the Arduino IDE. If you want to make your keyboard do something special, there are thousands of Arduino resources online to help you out.

 

Learn more about Keyboardio on Kickstarter, where you can pre-order it and support Jesse & Kaia, who made it with love (and just a bit of obsession).