NotARoomba · 142 points · 41 comments · yesterday · Open original
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NONotARoombayesterday
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
AGAgentlien3 hours ago
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.
MRmrheosuper1 hour ago
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.
9D9dev1 hour ago
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.
VIvim-guru50 minutes ago
I like the idea, but ergonomic keyboards are usually not perfectly columnar.
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5 preview comments · loading full threadLog in to h4cker, then connect Hacker News to publish comments.
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
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.
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.
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.
I like the idea, but ergonomic keyboards are usually not perfectly columnar.