Doesn’t it appear to be every thing sounds higher in French? I imply, who desires a sandwich when you may have a croque monsieur? And who would quite take heed to a music on the radio than a chanson? For that matter, why not ditch your keyboard for a clavier? Alright, so {hardware} often is the similar it doesn’t matter what you name it, however the customized keyboard constructed by L. Sartory is fairly distinctive in any case.
The design of the circuit board (📷: L. Sartory)
Named Clavier for causes that ought to now be apparent, Sartory’s construct is a full-size 105-key keyboard. Nicely, truly it has 106 keys, however that additional key has been put aside for the particular objective of locking your laptop when you have to step away for un café. A customized four-layer PCB was designed for the venture, and was populated with some good and clicky Cherry MX switches.
Not like most DIY keyboards, Clavier just isn’t powered by a microcontroller. Moderately, it packs an FPGA for the last word in velocity. Due to this, it has a 1,000Hz polling price and can by no means fail to register all key presses when a number of keys are pressed concurrently. New gaming keyboard, anybody?
The JTAG programming interface (📷: L. Sartory)
The keyboard circuit features a JTAG interface for programming the FPGA, and a CH347F chip for dealing with USB communication with the host laptop. A few of the FPGA’s GPIO pins are additionally uncovered with the intention to do some extra superior issues with Clavier, like management exterior {hardware}.
A case for the keyboard can both be 3D-printed or CNC machined, relying on what tools you have got obtainable to you and the way fancy you need to get. All the design information and firmware have been launched below permissive licenses on GitHub. Go seize them and get hacking!
