Discuss to any random keyboard fanatic (sure, we exist) and you’ll, no doubt, discover that they like mechanical keyboards. Why do fans like mechanical keyboards? There are a lot of causes, together with customizability and ergonomics. However the greatest issue is the irresistible “clickiness” of mechanical keyboards. Although quiet mechanical key switches do exist, most of them have a tactile break and an audible snap that could be very satisfying. However what if even that isn’t sufficient? Joe Scotto pushed issues to the restrict by placing a solenoid onto his customized mechanical keyboard so as to add much more kick.
The keyboard in query is Scotto’s appropriately named Scotto34, which has — you guessed it — 34 keys. It takes minimalism to an excessive and could be very compact. The important thing switches are all hand-wired, as a result of Scotto enjoys that course of. A Raspberry Pi Pico improvement board screens that hand-wired keyboard matrix and stories the outcomes to the pc related by way of USB. That’s all very easy and, whereas attention-grabbing to these of us who care about keyboards, isn’t precisely groundbreaking. The solenoid addition, however, ought to intrigue everybody who visits Hackster.
Scotto begins his video by demonstrating the thought with a single-key mockup. That has a Waveshare RP2040-Zero improvement board, one mechanical key sans cap, a PCB with a easy transistor circuit, a solenoid, and a few Blu Tack holding it altogether. Every time the RP2040 registers a key press, it sends energy to the solenoid by way of that transistor. That solenoid actuation dramatically enhances the conventional key swap click on.
To maneuver that idea over to the Scotto34 keyboard, Scotto designed an acceptable PCB and milled it out on a Makera Carvera Air desktop CNC mill. I lately reviewed the Carvera Air and it’s good for this type of factor (and far more). As with the mockup, that PCB’s predominant function is to host the transistor circuit.
Microcontroller improvement boards can’t provide a lot present by way of their GPIO pins and solenoids want fairly a little bit of present. The transistor right here acts as a digitally managed swap, so the RP2040 can ship energy instantly from the USB enter to the solenoid. Scotto was in a position to omit the Waveshare RP2040-Zero board, as a result of it might have been redundant when the Scotto34 already has the Pico.
The Scotto34 runs QMK firmware and Scotto was in a position to make a small tweak to that, telling it to briefly toggle the transistor pin with each key press. The solenoid does have a tough time maintaining with quick typing, however the further suggestions remains to be very satisfying.
