A hand-wired USB and Bluetooth keyboard powered by Python

https://github.com/makerdiary/python-keyboard

by kfihihc • 6 years ago

81 27 6 years ago

mchan889• 6 years ago

This looks cool, however can someone with some electronics know-how explain to me why the connections on most, if not all the keys are crossed? They don't look like insulated wires, though I could be wrong.

fenwick67• 6 years ago

Looks like they only appear to be touching in the photo but aren't really.

n3k5• 6 years ago

Insulated wires that look a lot like bare metal are quite common, e.g. in electromagnet coils.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_wire

The insulation melts away where it comes in contact with hot solder, so it's very easy to work with for hand-wiring projects.

stonecharioteer• 6 years ago

Haha that's amazing. What's the latency on this though? I always assumed firmware written in python would be slow for a use case like a keyboard.

kfihihc3• 6 years ago

It is a bit slow. It takes 4 ms to scan the matrix once right now. With some optimizations, it may be faster.

sk0g4• 6 years ago

Would Numpy be of use? Haven't looked at the source yet, but for a keyboard, 4 ms per matrix would be noticeably laggy, especially if you add debouncing (is that even a thing in keyboards?)

jonny3832• 6 years ago

Honestly, why Python? Writing a much faster equivalent in C really isn't any more complicated...

kfihihc3• 6 years ago

Just for fun :)

The hardware includes a QSPI flash which presents as an USB storage that stored Python source code, and you can modify Python directly.

BTW, It provides a new way to validate your hardware product ideas quickly.

jonny3832• 6 years ago

Solid answer. I just realised my question sounded cynical - which wasn't my intention.

hellweaver666• 6 years ago

If you want to make a little macro-keyboard equivalent at a fraction of the cost, I wrote a little guide (with example code) here: https://makeandymake.github.io/2020/05/02/seeeduino-xiao-cir...

kart23• 6 years ago

this is pretty cool!

I've wanted to hardwire a keyboard, but a full-size one seems pretty intimidating.

thecureforzits• 6 years ago

Nice, if I made it I would replace the capslock with control and "~" with escape. Make the least used keys require combinations, not the often used ones.

mvanbaak• 6 years ago

CAPS -> control I can follow, but the ~ key ... Man, that would be annoying as hell.

StavrosK2• 6 years ago

I use Caps Lock for both Ctrl and Esc, wouldn't have it any other way. Shift keys are also open/closing parens, holding down the tilde turns the "yuihjknm," section to a numpad, holding down Tab turns jkl; to {}[], etc.

Very handy when programming.

Keyframe2• 6 years ago

How's caps both ctrl and esc? Can you explain on shifts a bit? I guess you autotab

Abishek_Muthian• 6 years ago

This is nice, we need more such open-source, affordable keyboard designs and components; Especially for accessibility keyboards[1] as their costs are exorbitant.

[1]https://needgap.com/problems/96-one-hand-keyboard-keyboard-a...

davefp• 6 years ago

Great job! I've not seen python-based keyboard firmware before, I'm impressed that it's fast enough to run something like a keyboard.

Without detracting from the code in the post, I recommend that anyone wanting to make and program their own keyboard should take a look at QMK, a widely supported keyboard firmware project that is FOSS: https://qmk.fm/

BiteCode_dev• 6 years ago

A lot of people are asking:

- why python?

- isn't is slow?

Remember that Python is a language spec, there are several implementations.

This project uses a particular implementation called CircuitPython ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CircuitPython), a derivative project from MicroPython ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroPython), by the people at AdaFruit.

This implementation runs with a very different VM that can fit within 256k of code space and 16k of RAM.

So, while obviously you cannot expect anywhere near C level of perfs, this is way lighter than CPython.

The advantage is that you get the ease of Python to program your board, including the clean terce language, the memory management and the rich data structures. You can even have a live shell on some embeded hardwares! The whole dev process is so simple: code, copy your module, run.

Of course, some features of CPython are not available.

mzakharo1• 6 years ago

many people dont realize, but micropython has unix port, and it can be much slower than CPython. micropython's main advantage is size, not speed.

A hand-wired USB and Bluetooth keyboard powered by Python

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