The Setup

At the recent Everything Open Conference, I attended a taik by Vic OIiver on the one handed keyboard called the Quirkey.

I am attempting to write this blog post using a version of this keyboard I have made out of cardboard, a Arduino MKR 1310 board and some other bits and pieces of stuff that I found lying around the house. (I am going to have to stop here and go back to my regular QWERTY keyboard. I will have another practice later, but at the moment I am finding that I am using the ‘backspace’ more than I would like to.)

The details of Vik’s presentation are here, the code (https://github.com/VikOlliver/Microwriter) and documentation (https://github.com/VikOlliver/Quirkey) are available in Github.

While looking into the Arduino code, it occured to me that I had a dev board that would actually work with this code (the Arduino MKR 1310 which had been used in a previous project). In particular, this board supported the HID, and Keyboard and Mouse libraries, which is what allowed this board to appear as (surprise, surprise) a keyboard and mouse device when plugged into a USB port. There ae many naferious project ideas for this sort of technology, but I don’t think that the usefulness has been explored enough.

The Design

This project code takes the corded (multiple symaltanious keypress) inputs, of six buttons, and converts it into regular keyboard input. Vik’s presentation gives more of the backgound, and reasons why knowing how to use one handed keyboard is a good skill to have. In addition, the documentation includes helpful tools to assist in learning this skill, as will as a typing tutor.

So… I have an Arduno board that will do the job (there is a good list of supported boards on the HID Library page), I just need to get some switches.

The latest version of the Quirkey keyboards were the result of lots of trial and erro experimentation, and consited of a 3D printed shell with six mechancal switches. My Prusa printer is currently broken and I didn’t have any unused mechanical switches within reach, but I did have some cardboard, copper tape and my trusty soldering iron. So, after some of my own experimentation, we get the following design…

The cardboard switches are stuck down onto a piece of cardboard, wired up to the Arduino MKR 1310 board (any MKR 1000 series boar will work), and programmed with the MicroWriter Ardunio sketch. (Comments in the sketch indicate which pins connect to which switch.)

There is a 5 second delay on startup, but the board is now detected as an “Arduino LLC Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Keyboard” and “Arduino LLC Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Mouse”, and works as advertsed.

Conclusion

This is a great cheap-n-cheerful project incorporating a bunch of useful ‘maker’ techniques (soldering, wiring and Ardunio programming) which can be completed resonably quckly.. and at the end you get something useful to play with.

The switches aren’t perfect, but it’s great to have something to use to learn the one handed keyboard technique.

After practicing for a while, for not much more, the paper and copper switches and cardboard can be replaced with something a little more permanent. (A project for the future.)