Finding commercially available keyboards to be lacking, forum user smarrocco decided to create the custom keypad of their user-specific dreams as well as a corresponding TFT display.

On their blog, smarrocco discusses their design process in detail from identifying problems in existing commercial (including custom and gaming) keyboards to designing and developing his own vertical keypad to meet personal requirements. In the final design, the keys are grouped vertically placed in two sections according to their utility and an extra “thumb section” is added in consideration of left-handed artists like himself. Instead of printing labels on the keys themselves, he elected to use a TFT display in order to identify the buttons in order to allow the keys to be remapped in software without the user needing to move the physical components.

To drive the display and process the switches below the keys, he uses a Teensy 4.0 connected to an SD card reader that stores the settings. The project is an interesting study in producing custom interfaces as well as human-centered design approaches that consider how we can reinvent our electronics to be better suited for our needs.