there are all sorts of keyboards on the market today from elaborate gaming
platforms to Sleek utilitarian designs
but what about a keyboard for the Discerning gentleman the kind of
keyboard that says my other car is a
semi- rigid dirigible well don't pop a monacle but a
while back a tech Enthusiast by the name of Jack zilin created an open-source
project detailing how you can convert one of the several antique typewriters
you no doubt have cluttering up your budoir into a perfectly functional USB
keyboard and we're going to show you just how to do it old
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to start with let's do a brief primer on how a typewriter operates every key
press you'll notice they're extremely deep results in a mechanical action
involving Springs and levers that causes the ARM corresponding to the struck
letter to make contact with an ink ribbon and stamp the letter onto the
page as you type in theory the contact
point for each letter is identical and it's the page itself that moves back and
forth more on this later so this should
be pretty simple then thanks to the enduring querty standard there's a
convenient backwards compatibility of sorts so we could just take the existing
letter stamps put contacts where they strike and add some kind of digital
interface and boom it's Off to the Races right well no back to the point before
about all the arms hitting the same spot every key on the keyboard would hit the
same same spot typing the same letter over and over so you only look like a
badass until someone started reading your screenplay over your shoulder in
the local Starbucks so the way to get around this while preserving the
original aesthetic and as much of the original feel as possible is with this
the sensor bar it consists of a series of flexible metal contacts laid out like
piano keys across a circuit board that intercept the put directly under the
keys themselves so each actuation drops
a corresponding bar in this row which
strikes a contact and alerts the microcontroller to a key press cool
right let's show you how to do it before
we can install the sensor bar we need to displace the space bar for Access and
then remove the crossbar now ideally the
way you're supposed to do this is by unscrewing the two stops on the space
bar and loosening the screw so the space bar can swing out of your way
unfortunately thanks to Mr rust our screws are all stuck fast you can try to
solve this by applying a liberal dose of hydrogen peroxide and a few firm Taps to
let the liquid seep into the threads which worked for one of the screws we
needed but even after more Taps than Fred aer's second best pair of shoes the
screws on the space bar stops and the ones holding the crossbar in place
remained firmly jamed so naturally we gave up I'm just kidding
fortunately we have the skills and tools appropriate for this sort of delicate
operation success with unimpeded access
our next step is to remove the layer of paint on the bottom of the keys to
expose the electrically conductive metal underneath a lot of people would
recommend using a coar grit sandpaper to strip that away but what am I a monkey
banging rocks together that would take way too long I'm going to use a machine
now we're supposed to move the crossbar at this point so we can repurpose it
into a holder for the sensor bar but with the amount of corrosion and rust on
this thing it's not going anywhere time
for more improvization this chunk of metal we
procured has three qualities that are crucial to us one it's a flat surface
two it's rigid enough to be used as a support and three and perhaps most
importantly it was Within thin arms reaching our recycling pile so we sliced
a thin strip out of it to hold our sensor board now though we're going to
need some way to prop it up beneath the undercarriage ha Glory Be these two
empty threaded holes on either side of the typewriter frame are exactly where
we need them to be and currently woefully underutilized so we liberated
these two eyebolts from some large clanking machine near our electrical box
I'm about 80% certain they were structurally Superfluous and they fit
perfectly in these slots so all we need to do then is Twist them through to the
right depth a voila super firm with
barely any give like a fashionable whalebone coret now it's crucial at this
point to visually check the alignment of the dots on the back of the sensor board
with each metal bar then once we were sure it was perfectly positioned we
glued the sensor board onto our makeshift supports better use a little
more just to be sure maybe a touch more we don't want this going anywhere and
perfect we'll put the control panel here on the side where it's close enough to
the sensor bar for an easy connection and where we can easily reach it and
we're almost ready to flip it back over but there are just a few housekeeping
items to take care of these eyebolts extend way past where we need them and
the Scuttle butt is they made some disparaging remarks about the queen so
I'm afraid it's off with their heads it'd be a shame if we cut the cord to
our control panel though so we're going to make sure that that's tucked nicely
out of the way and move our space bar back in position we also need to attach
the control panel directly to the electrically conductive metal of the
frame with a grounding wire the best and
by best I mean the only one not so thoroughly rusted that we can actually
remove It screw for this job looks to be this one in the back now a modern
keyboard has keys that you won't find on any typewriter control alt and command
being among them you can just press the control box but the cooler way is to use
magnetic switches on the four auxiliary inputs that it allows so we set ours up
on the spacebar shift and carriage return which means that when we press
enter we get the satisfaction of slamming this lever every single time
and as any early 20th century typist will tell you that never gets old the
wires are a little all over the place at this point but after a quick round of
cable management we are pretty much done everything looks as tight and rigid as
late Victorian gender norms and the end result is a piece of Hardware that is
more than just another disposable peripheral but rather an interesting
Alchemy of antique and Modern Machinery
not to mention a beautiful centerpiece for a desk An Elegant keyboard the blue
screen of death if you type too fast but
it's great if you're interested in a tactile typing experience that even the
best mechanical keyboards can't match if you enjoy technology with a unique
aesthetic or if you just want to show up all the wannabe hipsters at your next
poetry slam we're teaming up with rocket to
give away three of their Skelter keyboards their membrane keyboards that
you can use seamlessly with both your phone and your PC at the same time so
you type directly to your phone sltt and
then switch back to your PC with the touch of a button you can utilize rocket
swarm app to enhance your gaming experience with a secondary screen/
control system using your phone as well you can play games in full screen while
watching a stream or a video on your phone you can answer incoming text messages well that's a phone but don't
worry too much about that without having to minimize your game or look away for
too long and you can even accept phone calls see now see how I turn that around
there with your headset and switch audio between your phone and your PC so enter
at the link below for a chance to
win so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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