Controls engineer Don Kiser has determined that mechanical keyboards simply aren’t noisy sufficient, and set about constructing a tool to deal with that very downside — creating The Factor That Goes CLACK and Ding.
“I like mechanical keyboards,” Kiser explains, referring to the gadgets, in style amongst typists and sometimes hated by anybody with whom they need to share an workplace, which use often-clicky mechanical key switches instead of a quieter however mushier membrane, “and my coworkers joked my present keyboard wasn’t loud sufficient. So, I made the clacker.”
Designed to offer a mechanical keyboard actual meat, this “clacker” smacks a block of wooden with each press. (📷: Don Kiser)
The Clacker is a field housing a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller board and designed to take a seat between any USB keyboard and the host machine. The Teensy is given the job of intercepting every key press because it occurs, after which fires a chunky solenoid to bodily thwack a wood block — making a satisfying thunk significantly louder than the clicking of the actual key change.
“Why? Effectively, why not,” Kiser asks. “Positive, I might go purchase and 5251 wire it as much as run on mains energy and have an actual solenoid however that might get me fired. So, this obtained my level throughout and now mechanical keyboards are a factor at work.”
The machine has one other couple of tips up its sleeve, too, past merely hitting a block of wooden. Impressed by the carriage return bell of conventional keyboards, a press of the Enter or Return key leaves the wood block alone and as an alternative rings a bell — whereas hitting Caps Lock performs the Tremendous Mario Bros. mushroom-growth sound when enabled then its shrinking counterpart when disabled.
The construct consists of one solenoid to hit the wooden, one other to ring a bell, and a speaker for sound results too. (📷: Don Kiser)
Kiser is not the one one to want somewhat extra meat from the sound of a mechanical keyboard: in March final yr Ming-Gih Lam confirmed off the Purple Herring Solenoid Version, a customized split-layout mechanical keyboard which — because the identify implies — included a solenoid triggered on key press. A management system allowed the quantity of the ensuing hit to be adjusted — or disabled completely for quiet typing.
A full write-up and components checklist is on the market on Kiser’s Hackaday.io web page.
