This post is to serve as a starting point for WEY keyboards. I think they are awesome and not a lot is known about them. Unfortunately they are currently sort-of hard to get running but I plan to fix that. I will edit this post with more info over time.
Currently I have two WEY keyboards. One, an EK2000 is on loan from another GH'er. The other, an HK2000 is mine outright. Both are currently working though neither are currently fully functional.
As far as I know, to get a WEY keyboard working on USB, the trick is to use a connector box. I have a Connector box Va (five a) on loan from another GH'er. You can see photos of it in the album below:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dork_vader/sets/72157648349409637/The keyboard is plugged into the connector box via a cable. These cables were a real pain to find. They are called a number of different things.
- IEEE-1284 type C
- HPCN 36 (there is no consensus as to what HPCN actually means. My money's on Half Pitch CentroNics)
- mini-centronics
- MDR36 (MDR stands for "mini D ribbon I think)
You need a male-to-male cable.
Further complicating things, 10,25, and 50 pin versions of this connector exist. They are sometimes used for external SCSI or other protocols. I was not able to find these cables in the USA for under $50 each. Two sources had them listed for under $20 but turned out to not have stock. I found several sources in the UK with stock under 10 GBP though. It's up to European readers to determine if they are actually available though.
You can also use two of the much more common centronics36 to mini-centronics 36 cables and a centronics coupler.
The connector box has to be powered from a wall plug (otherwise it would be too easy) likely in part to power the power-hungry display that these things have. Mine takes 7-12V, and is supposed to be used with 12V at 0.15A (1.8W). The input is fused and there is an LED that lights up when the box is powered.
The box uses a "power DIN 3" plug. One of the large pins is power, the other is ground. The small pin is likely unused but is connected to power on the PCB. The pin closest to the smaller pin is power. The shell of the connector is not electrically connected.
These boxes (or at least mine) use a very expensive looking 4-layer PCB. They act as a power unit for the keyboard (possibly a control unit) and as a KVM. Mine has outputs for 5 or 6 different computers.
The way to get one working, then, is to get the keyboard itself, a connector box, a cable, and something to power the box. I soldered the leads from a 12V wall wart directly to the PCB. If you want to use a power brick with an actual power-DIN 3 connector on it: be ware! Most are 24V supplies for printers and the like.
Once you have the keyboard plugged into the box and the box powered, the keyboard will turn on and start working. You can press the keys, though most won't do anything. You can even change the mode of the keyboard. If you have an HK2000 with a display you can see the function keys change. It's pretty cool.
Now each keyboard "mode" is connected to a different "output" on the box, and likely meant to be connected to a different computer. On my keyboard, mode 2 was left pretty much default. I plugged in a USB cable to the USB2 port, pressed the "WS2" button on my keyboard and got scancodes! all 105 of them (I forget if altgr sends a different one or not, and I don't remember if the blank key next to LSHIFT does anything) The upper area of 16-keys did nothing. The upper 12 function keys sent "shift+fn#" because that's how the KB was programmed to act in that mode (sometimes they send F13-F24, sometimes who knows? they are just labelled "help" "bid" etc. on the screen.)
Easier ways to connect these?
Now I know not everyone is wanting to buy a $50 controller box on eBay and then also buy a bunch of cables just to get their keyboard working. I am pretty sure there is an easier way but not 100%. It will depend on if we can determine the pinout of that 36-pin connector. Here's what I have so far.
- Most of the 36 pins are used. for something
- about 3-4 of the pins carry power and ground, directly from the power-in on the power brick.
- Some of the pins appear to carry PS/2 data. I think it's for the PS/2 port on the keyboard to also switch the mouse
- I suspect the keyboard is PS/2 natively and that if we can find the right pins you can just cram a teensy in there with soarer's code and call it a day.
- I really don't want to stick my scope on each pin there looking for stuff. Anyone have a logic analyzer handy?
Okay post any questions here and I'll see about updating this. Also post any other info you may have that I've forgotten. Thank goodness I started this before I learned more about WEY stuff or I'd probably never be able to type out an info post like this.
Ok enjoy! I'll put some some pretty pictures and whatever later. These keyboards are really interesting, designed in an expensive way (MSRP is like $1000)
More info is currently in this topic
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=63217.0Forgot to say, both the keyboard and connector box are made by GMK are are branded as such on the PCB.
Work to be done:
- figure out the pinout of the 36-pin connector
- Figure out if the config is stored on the keyboard (pretty sure it is) and how to change / reprogram it
- Figure out what protocol the keyboard uses to talk to the conenctor box with and allow easy teensy use
- Figure out what protocol the keyboard uses internally to talk to the different parts (the 16-modular block is just a matrix extension: do data. The upper fn block and main block communicate to the motherboard via some sort of digital. Just need to read the chips, look up datasheets I think)
- profit?
