Project Kiiboard

If you can’t buy it, do it yourself. With this motto in mind, Lauri Hakkarainen, a mostly self taught Finnish web developer and tinkerer, embarked on Project Kiiboard. Project what you say? Project Kiiboard – a computer which is housed inside a keyboard. A cool idea!

The motivation behind this project was this: Lauri loves keyboards – the old ones with big keys that were used in desktops – and he had a recently purchased an RPi that he did not know what to do with it. Comes along this idea. Before he could jump into the project he needed to find out if there was enough space inside the keyboard we was going to purchase. RPi does take some space and there needs to be some for wiring too. He put the question on Reddit and soon found his answer there. It was a No. So he went for WASD V2 88-Key keyboard that seemed suitable.

The Kiiboard works in two modes:

– Mode 1 – “KB-mode” in which the keyboard will function as QWERTY and brainless.

– Mode 2 – “Pi-mode” in which the mode will send power to the Pi using the keyboard’s usb cord, while the keyboard itself will be connected to the usb port of the RPi.

Check out the link below to visit Lauri’s blog. All the updates are compiled on that page and it is really wonderful to read about them. There is step by step instructions. All the challenges that the maker faces. And very clear demonstrative images. And it never gets boring!