Show HN: A Truly Modular Keyboard (github.com)

With such complexity per key, are there other advantages besides the modularity? Are there per key customizations this could enable that regular keyboards couldn’t do in firmware alone?

A while back I was frustrated when wanting to buy a keyboard that there were no triangle-shaped keyboards or circle-shaped keyboards. This lack of peculiar keyboard shapes gave me the idea to make a keyboard that could be reconfigurable into any shape my heart desired. I’m still working on the firmware and making more keys but I wanted to share my progress so far. Heres the source if anyone’s interested in how I made it: https://github.com/notaroomba/keybytes

I like the idea but I could only find an image of two keys. It would be great to see a demo of a full layout. With only two keys it's a very early POC and hardly a keyboard.

Does communication work well and feel snappy with a full set of keys? How is the structural integrity of a full one? Can it be easily moved around? That type of questions could easily make this unusable at scale.

OT but I'd like to see circuits of this type, on this scale, available for every loco or car (or building or structure) in a model railroad. An interface to DCC. Every car addressable and effects controllable. Much more cheaply than the current SOTA.

Something similar: https://youtu.be/_u8gV643214

The keys are attached to a board so it can be in any orientation

Neat project, given how cheap the ch32v003 is there are lots of opportunities to do fun distributed things with them (assume you have seen bitluni’s projects [1]) - even if they aren’t really practical!

I didn’t see the ch32 firmware in the repository - the ch32v003 only has 1 i2c peripheral - assume you are bit-banging the others?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@bitluni

The I2C has limit of 127 of different addresses. Also there can be I2C hang, especially when there is that many slaves on the bus.

Maybe using CAN is better.

This is awesome!

How does the rigidity of the keyboard hold up with many keys and what's the cost of the materials at higher order quantity?

Fantastic work, I'm always excited to new modular input device projects like this.

Are the connectors actually direction-agnostic? Looking at the layout it seems like depending on which side you connect you have a 50% chance of having the pin order reversed, and there don't appear to be any additional switching components correcting for it.

Do you have plans to address this so that any side can connect to any side? Or can they already and I've missed something?

I like the idea, but ergonomic keyboards are usually not perfectly columnar.

I'd suggest also adding blank modules without a switch on them for empty space on the keyboard (for example around arrow keys), that would still provide the interconnect to adjacent keys. Cool project.

Sometimes my keyboards get dropped and lose a keycap or two, but never anything serious. If this is dropped on the floor, my trusty keyboard will turn into a bag of puzzle bits, right in the middle of heated gameplay or a meeting...

I think maybe the most difficult part will be cost. As far as I know, it will cost more than 5 dollars per item. But if the quality is good enough, I think maybe some gaming user will buy it. Customize layouts is really important for gaming user.

This is a really neat idea for a macro keyboard. If it supported staggered rows and row heights, not to mention structural rigidity it would be good for everyday use too.

I'm not sure if I have a use case for this but on the technical aspects this is so cool. Those magnetic snaps made me grin!

good idea! the other day was doing a roundup on keyboards to see whats new and got a striking realization, how nobody has ever slapped a nvme slot into on the back/core part of the enclosure to use as external drive since lot of us comute everyday with extra peripherals

Is there a mouse module? Can you connect in a "staggered" manner rather than in a linear grid?

This is very cool.

It needs spacers / extensions so it can be laid out as desired.

I’ve wondered when someone would do this (which gets rid of the annoyances of scanning).

The real breakthrough would be reprogrammable key legends in something like e-ink.

I looked over the PCB and schematic and it looks well polished. Not a first draft obviously.

I sort of don’t get the 4x I2C busses. I’m probably missing something obvious but it isn’t immediately apparent how the units all have addressing worked out.

This is cool, but wouldn't it cost more than $2k for a 104-key keyboard? I can't imagine these PCBs having a final price of less than $20 each.

Now give them all wheels so they can rearrange themselves on my desk

Very cool, would really like one

this is extremely cool. would love to see full board

Non-viable product. I would NOT buy this.

- How much does it cost? Sell price, not BoM price. I expect something like $10'000 for a full 104-key layout.

- How heavy would it be?

- Can you lift a 104-key layout from the table without it breaking in 2 (or more) pieces? Can you even lift or move a 40% layout with one hand?

- How do you arrange it in a non-ortholinear layout? If you can't, then anyone can just buy an ordinary ortholinear for $100 and switch layouts in software.

- How does the spacebar key look like? Enter key? Shift? I can't type if those big keys aren't big.

- How do you make spaces between key groups?

- There are a lot of pogo pin connections. It's statistically impossible for all of them to work. Is there any redundancy for those connections? Alternate signal paths with automatic rerouting? Any debugging tools/indicators to find where the bad connections are?

- If you have a MCU in every key, and at that price, I would expect them to have a mini-display in the keycap plus lots of other fancy features.

- How about automatic function assignment for each key based on it's location? Can it do that? If not, then any drop on the floor becomes a half-hour puzzle-solving problem.