[HN Gopher] Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry key...
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Lilygo T-Keyboard: An ESP32 Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard
Author : zenkalia
Score : 53 points
Date : 2024-01-16 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lilygo.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lilygo.cc)
| zenkalia wrote:
| After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks
| keyboard, I felt like this needed to be shared. I nearly built
| something like the Clicks for myself but the closer I got the
| worse it seemed, ergonomically. Not only that the Clicks key
| layout only has shift on one side and it doesn't have a
| backlight.
|
| Some background: I have been shopping around for a bluetooth
| keyboard to use for thumb typing for the last few months. I have
| a book to edit and a newborn that is always sleeping on my chest.
| I tried a few bluetooth keyboards from Amazon but they were all
| garbage.
|
| Eventually I found the T-Keyboard and have been really pleased by
| it. This is the keyboard from the T-Deck with a little 160x40
| screen attached to it. The screen allows you to see what you're
| typing on the device without looking at your phone. It boots in
| half a second which means switching back and forth is lightning
| fast. If I'm typing a few words, I stick to my touchscreen. I'm
| editing so there's a lot of selecting text to copy / paste /
| annotate which is also touchscreen work. When I need to add a new
| paragraph or more, I set my phone down and pick this thing up to
| type with.
|
| It really is fantastic. If you decide to pick one up, you may
| want to run my fork which fixes a bunch of the usability issues:
| https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/tree/bleeding_edge
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the
| Clicks keyboard
|
| Care to link those? I've been poking around some of this stuff
| and have a Lilygo T-Display and T-Embed en route, would be nice
| to see other more knowledgable folks' opinion on the products,
| dev experience, etc.
|
| (edit, there isnt much in a search for 'lilygo' so I surmise
| it's this fella https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862848 )
| zenkalia wrote:
| That's the one! And this was the Clicks discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38871987
|
| It's not very relevant to Lilygo tinkering but just a deep
| discussion of physical keyboards for phone use.
| pomatic wrote:
| The problem I have with the blackberry keyboards is the
| omission of commonly used linux symbols such as tilde - how do
| you cope with that? Or perhaps I am missing a trick? I've
| resorted to salvaging Psion 5 keyboards and rolling my own
| hardware as the result.
| zenkalia wrote:
| I don't need a tilde but I could add one in about 5 minutes
| if needed. It would be something like this:
|
| https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/blob/bleeding_edge/ex.
| ..
|
| except it would add a ~ rather than trigger an arrow key. I'd
| likely put it on sym+q so that it is in a similar space to a
| real keyboard.
|
| I was discussing special characters with someone on github.
| If the character isn't in the font you'll have to do some
| extra work that I summarized in this comment:
| https://github.com/Xinyuan-
| LilyGO/T-keyboard/issues/10#issue...
|
| In the comment above it the mapping table that I'm talking
| about is this one: https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/blo
| b/bleeding_edge/ex... .
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| >layout only has shift on one side
|
| Do people use right shift? Earnest question
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| lilygo has been killing it for a while now with great small
| embedded devices.
|
| The keyboard plus ultra small typing screen is a super neat idea.
|
| I do wish the key card here also had the pointer pad too, but
| still a great offering. seen a bunch of these but usually without
| case, and the price here (<$19) is pretty fine.
|
| This post also is a sad reminder that I haven't used or been even
| semi fluent in my Twiddler for nearing a decade now. Now _that_
| was the ideal ubiquitous computer keyboard, if you can overcome
| the arduous learning curve.
| pomatic wrote:
| Check out tindie - there is a solder party blackberry keyboard
| with a track pad. No display. If the display is important to
| you, then look at the TTGO-deck - a larger device but it has
| both keyboard & pointer.
| zenkalia wrote:
| These things have unfortunately been sold out for a while.
| Not only that, if I wanted to use the BBQ20 with my phone I'd
| have to connect it to a BLE chip and a battery which is way
| more hacking than I wanted to do on this project.
| zenkalia wrote:
| > overcome the arduous learning curve
|
| Oh man. This reminds of the end of my developer career. I moved
| over to management because of awful RSI but in a desperate
| attempt to keep typing I learned the AlphaGrip. If I can master
| that thing, I can master anything!
|
| http://www.alphagrip.com/
| axegon_ wrote:
| Great but Lilygo should dedicate some of their efforts into
| writing documentation, even it it means dialing down the
| development of new products. I have several personal projects
| involving some Lilygo products and they are taking forever simply
| because I spent 95% of the time reverse engineering whatever
| examples they have and try to make some sense of what it is I'm
| actually holding in my hands. In most cases you don't even get a
| datasheet.
| pomatic wrote:
| Honestly, this isn't the case - at least in my experience -
| every product I've bought from them has come with a pinout
| diagram that is also duplicated on github. Sure, getting the
| hardware up and running is challenging, and sometimes the
| examples are a bit arcane or have weird omissions in terms of
| illustrating the device's capabilities, but it's a booster pack
| compared to designing and programming similar embedded hardware
| from scratch.
| photoGrant wrote:
| Honestly, it is -- I've a handful of devices and at least 2
| needed debug level recovery of the firmware because of board
| revisions and pinouts for the same product being vastly
| different.
|
| They should do better, but they're in a fun corner of the
| industry pushing out a half decent solution, so I accept.
| kbar13 wrote:
| i have the same thought. they are really good at identifying
| market needs but their documentation is so lacking that it is
| more rewarding and only slightly slower to design and implement
| some of their less complicated modules yourself...
| zenkalia wrote:
| This is 100% true. The documentation isn't great. The code
| itself isn't great, either and it's the only thing you can go
| off of.
|
| One thing Lilygo really should do is start merging pull
| requests. Many of them are fixing the documentation because we
| love tinkering with their devices and want to pave the way for
| others.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Even if this keyboard is as good as a real BB back in the golden
| years using it on an iPhone is a mess. BBin the golden years was
| fully optimized for operating with a keyboard.
|
| iPhone is optimized for being a touch screen driven system. Those
| conflict.
|
| I tried for a good time to develop something very similar years
| ago, but 1) I wasn't able to find financing and 2) (more
| importantly) trying to write a UI Shell for Android that worked
| like the original BB was perhaps not impossible, but way past my
| and the people with me skill level.
|
| Now what we need is to find an Android device that can run the
| classic BB software. (Yeah they made their own Android BB, but it
| sucked)
| sowbug wrote:
| I know this is more of a hacker tool than an end-user product,
| but I wish more Bluetooth keyboards used their USB port not just
| to charge, but also to become a wired USB keyboard when plugged
| in. It's rare to need a wired keyboard, but it's nice for those
| times when you need to twiddle a BIOS setting or bootstrap a
| Bluetooth pairing flow.
| comprev wrote:
| The Apple Magic keyboard I have does this and thought it was a
| common feature of Bluetooth keyboards. Apparently not...
| KomoD wrote:
| Isn't this super common? Pretty much every bluetooth keyboard
| I've had can do both wired and bluetooth
| mkl wrote:
| Not in my experience. I have two different Bluetooth
| keyboards (and three non-Bluetooth wireless keyboards), none
| of which can operate wired. At least one of the non-Bluetooth
| ones can be used to get into BIOS though.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I can't see carrying one of these for use with a phone/tablet (at
| least not with this version's chunkiness) but something like this
| with a trackpoint added would make a great companion for a home
| theater PC. Even better if it had multi-pairing so it could
| switch between a PC, console, streaming box, etc.
|
| Currently am using a Lenovo ThinkPad Keyboard II for this purpose
| which is pretty good (dual RF/BT modes let me switch between
| devices, trackpoint is better than the chintzy integrated
| trackpads in most couch-keyboards), but something that takes up
| less coffee table space and is more like a remote would be even
| better.
| unwind wrote:
| Wow, that's cute! And it has a (weirdly written in the specs, but
| I'll reinterpret based on images) 160x40 color screen connected
| over 4-wire SPI. That means it can be fast, and having a full
| keyboard and a decent CPU means ... there will be games written
| for this. Cool!
| oofoe wrote:
| Also check out the so-called M5 Cardputer, which is part of the
| M5Stack line of products. Has the colour display and super tiny
| keyboard, but also SD card, mic and speaker and battery.
| Plus... you can attach it to legos or fridges!
| bitzun wrote:
| I would be really into a phone with the double-tap keyboard and
| rocker of the Blackberry 7100, maybe adding the trackball.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| keep seeing mechanical keyboard addons for phones... are we
| finally going in the right direction (until they figure out
| something better)?
| Springtime wrote:
| I wonder if any of these DIY Blackberry keyboard products (or BB-
| like such as that recent Clicks case) have the capacitive
| touchpad feature that later Blackberry had, where you could use
| the surface of the keyboard itself as a touchpad for scrolling,
| tapping (without depressing any key), text selection, etc.
| zenkalia wrote:
| Not that I've seen. The Lilygo and BBQ20 keyboards all seem to
| use surplus Arabic BB keyboards that are made to be used with
| the little trackpad thing like on the tdeck.
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(page generated 2024-01-16 23:00 UTC)