Building A Raspberry Pi Inside An Apple Extended Keyboard

[ezrahilyer]

I built a Raspberry Pi inside an Apple Extended Keyboard. This is my project:

http://straypoetry.com/project/raspberry-pi-inside-a-vintage-mechanical-apple-extended-keyboard/


I also did a model M, and probably will make some more, I am thinking of making a dedicated Emacs machine with one of the smaller ALPS boards that has Control where the caps lock button usually is.

[MGH]

Got any pictures of the internals?

[ezrahilyer]

Got any pictures of the internals?

I do, follow the link above the picture, and you can see how I did it.

[MGH]

Got any pictures of the internals?

I do, follow the link above the picture, and you can see how I did it.

Oh wow, the Pi is way smaller than I thought it would be

[ezrahilyer]

Got any pictures of the internals?

I do, follow the link above the picture, and you can see how I did it.

Oh wow, the Pi is way smaller than I thought it would be

It is pretty small, but actually pretty capable. There is plenty of room inside the AEK case, I am surprised there is so much empty space in there.
I was even thinking of putting a Macbook Air logic board in there to make it come full-circle. I am about 90% sure I could pull it off with no trouble.

[rowdy]

Very well done!

And probably at least 100 times faster than the original Apple computer the keyboard was connected to.

[ezrahilyer]

Made it onto Hackaday.com : http://hackaday.com/2014/12/10/vintage-apple-keyboard-revived-as-standalone-computer/

and the Adafruit blog: https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/12/19/raspberry-pi-inside-a-vintage-mechanical-apple-keyboard/

And Cult Of Mac: http://www.cultofmac.com/306106/turn-apples-best-keyboard-fully-functional-pc/

Geek.com also : http://www.geek.com/chips/raspberry-pi-turns-one-of-the-most-famous-keyboards-ever-into-its-own-computer-1611464/

Now I feel famous! :-) lol

[rowdy]

I saw it linked somewhere too, but the linking page said it was a Model M.

Congratulations

[ezrahilyer]

I saw it linked somewhere too, but the linking page said it was a Model M.

Congratulations

I did one in a Model M too. Less room in there than the AEK! I had to cut off the rear display ribbon connector to get it to fit under the plate of the M, but I used a HDMI bulkhead connector to get the HDMI out so I didn't need it anyway.

I have one of the new Raspberry Pi A+ models on the way, I want to experiment with making my own direct matrix input onto the GPIO pins so I don't need the Atmega 32u4 next time.
I want to build it into something really small, I am thinking about one of these:

[rowdy]

Actually that might be an interesting use for the A+ Pi - keyboard controller )

[ezrahilyer]

Actually that might be an interesting use for the A+ Pi - keyboard controller )

As far as I can tell, it wouldn't be possibly to actually use the Pi as a controller to connect a keyboard to another computer since the GPIO pins would only report the key inputs to the Pi when it was booted up and running, and then would have to be passed to the desktop computer somehow, but for one thing, the Pi doesn't have the ability to act as a USB HID device, and the other is that it draws a little bit too much power to run off a computer USB port reliably. I have tired it and it will work sometimes, but only on high amperage ports.

You could however possibly SSH into the Pi from your computer and redirect the keyboard to your computer... Or even use a program like Synergy running on the Pi to takeover the keyboard input on your primary computer........ Possibly possibly......

[rowdy]

Actually that might be an interesting use for the A+ Pi - keyboard controller )

As far as I can tell, it wouldn't be possibly to actually use the Pi as a controller to connect a keyboard to another computer since the GPIO pins would only report the key inputs to the Pi when it was booted up and running, and then would have to be passed to the desktop computer somehow, but for one thing, the Pi doesn't have the ability to act as a USB HID device, and the other is that it draws a little bit too much power to run off a computer USB port reliably. I have tired it and it will work sometimes, but only on high amperage ports.

You could however possibly SSH into the Pi from your computer and redirect the keyboard to your computer... Or even use a program like Synergy running on the Pi to takeover the keyboard input on your primary computer........ Possibly possibly......

The death of another idea

One of my long term plans is to get hold of an old terminal, preferably with the keyboard and screen in one case, and mod it to have a small flatscreen monitor, mechanical keyboard and RPi inside to act as a "dumb" terminal.

The Pi could be running something like cool-retro-term for that old-skool look.

[suicidal_orange]

As far as I can tell, it wouldn't be possibly to actually use the Pi as a controller to connect a keyboard to another computer since the GPIO pins would only report the key inputs to the Pi when it was booted up and running, and then would have to be passed to the desktop computer somehow, but for one thing, the Pi doesn't have the ability to act as a USB HID device, and the other is that it draws a little bit too much power to run off a computer USB port reliably. I have tired it and it will work sometimes, but only on high amperage ports.

I don't know about the A+ but the original model A could act as a USB slave as it has a direct connection from the SoC to the USB A port where the model B has a USB hub/LAN chip in the way - see here.

As for power the model A uses less because it doesn't have the extra chip - I've used one extensively (actually mine's a B with the USB chip removed - extra RAM means slightly more power needed than a real A) in command prompt on USB power and never had a crash, but I may just have good ports everywhere.

What you'd have to do to make it work I have little idea so I asked about it here, but as you can see the idea was met with less than helpful replies so I quickly gave up on it and got a Teensy.  Seems the comments improved.

I'm busy now but I think this is a project for next year.  Now I don't have a keyboard to fix though... )

[rowdy]

Kinda linked from somewhere else that some people might notice:

https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/546399965656797184

[MOZ]

That is super cool, I've wanted to do this with my Model M for such a long time. Perhaps one day.