I couldn’t find the keyboard I wanted, so I built it.
Unable to find an USB chiclet keyboard as we have on laptop (and with a reasonable price), I decided to create mine.
We can recover keyboard from an old laptop or buy a spare one (the one I chose is exactly the same that I have on my laptop, with backlight so it cost me 36 euros, but you can easily find cheaper ones).
- spare laptop keyboard (here with a 30 pins 0.8mm FPC ribbon)
- ESP32-S3 (we need about 30 IO pins...)
- 2 FPC connectors: 30 pins 0.8mm
for keys, 6 pins (couldn't find 4 pins that meet requirements) 1mmfor backlight - Dupont cables while we don't have PCB
- (optional) speaker
- get components
- assemble everything on a breadboard
- program the esp32
- testing the prototype in real conditions
- design PCB
- 3D model the case
- get last components
- print the case
- assemble the final keyboard
