ChrisKeyboards

I couldn’t find the keyboard I wanted, so I built it.

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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).

Components

• 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) 1mm for backlight
• Dupont cables while we don't have PCB
• (optional) speaker

Road map

• get components
• assemble everything on a breadboard
• program the esp32
• testing the prototype in real conditions
• implement missing features
• design PCB
• 3D model the case
• get last components
• print the case
• assemble the final keyboard

Project pictures