Do-it-yourself keyboard fanatic Joe Scotto is again with a brand new design, and it is an fascinating tackle an ergonomic format in an ultra-thin chassis — held along with a powerful 96 screws.
“This board is the ScottoWing,” Scotto says of his newest keyboard construct, “which is my thinnest hand-wired keyboard but measuring roughly lower than 20mm [around 0.79 inches] tall. It is utilizing Choc Silver [switches] due to their clear housing which completely pairs with the resin printed keycaps.”
This totally 3D-printed keyboard is ultra-slim but unshakably safe, due to no fewer than 96 screws. (📷: Joe Scotto)
Contained in the unusually slim housing is a Waveshare RP2040-Zero, a low-cost microcontroller board based mostly on Raspberry Pi’s dual-core RP2040 chip — although Scotto notes the design can also be appropriate with an Arduino Micro or Raspberry Pi Pico footprint. Every swap is wired with a typical floor then to the RP2040-Zero, which acts because the controller and gives USB connectivity for the keyboard.
The unusually-thin housing did convey some challenges, nevertheless, together with an undesirable flex throughout typing. Scotto solved this in an fascinating, if uncommon, means: including screws. A number of screws. “One factor you in all probability discover is what number of screws the board has, that was each a stylistic and performance alternative,” the maker explains. “As a result of it is so skinny, the plate flexes so much. Utilizing 48 stand-offs with 96 screws was the answer to this.”
The keyboard is pushed by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, hand-wired to every swap. (📷: Joe Scotto)
That is removed from Scotto’s first foray into hand-wired keyboard designs. Earlier creations embody a two-part cut up keyboard which makes use of a single microcontroller and a repurposed VGA cable as an interconnect, the one-piece ScottoErgo with rugged USB connector, a one-handed keyboard designed to sub in for the discontinued Frogpad, and a Raspberry Pi RP2040-based machine which is definitely a not-so-secret mouse. All have one factor in widespread: their switches are related utilizing direct wiring, with no underlying printed circuit board.
As with Scotto’s earlier board designs, the information for the ScottoWing have been launched on GitHub underneath the reciprocal Artistic Commons Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license; extra info is obtainable on Scotto’s web site.