It must be April in October again, because Google Japan has a new, hilariously impractical reimagining of the keyboard: a conveyor belt. This time it’s on GitHub with firmware, STLs, and a full build guide if you, too, want to wait a full cycle to get the ‘backspace’ key whenever you make a typo, or to write such fun words as “ooid” or “princesship”.
You can watch it in action in the video embedded below, but just the photo probably gives you the idea: the four staggered rows of keys are each 3D-printed chains holding mechanical key switches, driven from a motor in the base. Each row also has a flexible PCB to keep everything wired together, though it’s unclear how those electrical impulses from the key presses get off the conveyor belt and into your computer. That part of the build guide is “TBD” and the source code doesn’t appear to be complete.
Those details may be forthcoming, or it might never be revealed because this is obviously a joke, but now that they’ve gone to the effort of providing STLs, we’re now invested in figuring out how to actually make it work. A BLE-equipped microcontroller in each belt? RFID tags on each key, with readers in the base? SMD LEDs on the flex PCB that flash out the ASCII code of each pressed key as they whiz past a sensor? In theory, any of those should work, but which should we use? You decide!
We like Google Japan and their weird keyboards, and we have to say that compared to the hat from a few years ago, this one is almost practical, though the rotary-phone one wins on style points. In some ways, it occurs to us that this is the exact inverse of the chain printers of yesteryear.
Thanks to [CityZen] for the tip! If October for you is more “spooky” than “silly”, we still want to know about it. Or if you build any of the Gboards. Either way, let us know on the tips line what you’re up to.
