geekhack Projects > Making Stuff Together!

HHKB/Poker style ghetto salvage board - My first DIY KB

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Maarten:
Sooooo..... I really love the very small keyboards i read about on this board but the features these boards have could be better so i decided to give building a board like this a go myself (In the words of the famous Clarksonius; How hard can it be?). And since for a forum called geekhack there can never be enough actual hacking* done by geeks i decided to do a little post of my board here.

*) By hacking i mean the kind done with a hacksaw or in my case powertools ;)

Take a big board, an angle grinder, some pieces of metal profile and a lot of spare time and you could end up with something like this;
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43084[/ATTACH]

NKRO over PS/2 and 5KRO+mod over USB
Fully programmable in two layers
Compact yet strong as heck (1,5m steel plate mounted and 2mm aluminium case)

Now, for me part of the fun of building anything is to use old/recycled/salvaged parts. For this specific build for example all the rewiring on the board has been done using wire pulled from a old broken network cable, case has been built from metal found in my garage, connectors have been salvaged from and old ADSL modem, a paperclip and an empty ballpoint refill are now doing a great job as a stabilizer, and the majority of parts has been taken from a used Access board (think mounting plate, keys, caps, screws, feet etc). The only things i really had to buy for this build are the nice color caps and the USB board (also known here as a blue cube i think).

Now, as you can probably see on the pic above im still waiting for more/other good ol caps to arrive but since i type blind most of the time i can work just fine on the board as is. I will however in the future change/add many things on this board (maybe even teensy the thing so it could be a bit thinner), ill try to keep my little build updated here.

Made some more pics;

Heres a nice up-front shot showing the nice 14x5 size a bit better;
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43086[/ATTACH]
As you can see width-wise its about as small as it gets but both top and bottom could one day lose another CM or so....

This is basically how the back looks like right now;
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43087[/ATTACH]
This back is just a temporary one so its not pretty. As you can see the plate is stepped outwards to house the pretty large Access-IS control board but if i ever decide to swap the board to a more compact teensy controller i should be able to fit a nice flat plate.

Here you can see how much thicker the current back makes the board;
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43088[/ATTACH]
The straight side also widens a tiny bit to the back as you can see, this should give enough clearance to house a teensy. Yes, it also needs either some paint or a better brushing-job... i know.....

And heres just some fancy other angles;
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43089[/ATTACH] [ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43090[/ATTACH]

Currently im running the board programmed like this (top is regular, bottom layer 1);
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 43095[/ATTACH]

fossala:
Looks good. Wish I had the skills to do something like that.

kaiserreich:
You've made a WYSE decision.
The board looks great.

jonnybastard:
Damn that looks unreal, love the unbreakeyble moniker.

Maarten:
Added MOAR pics!!eleven!1

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