[Gossip. Keyboard] Sudo. Wang(YQ.) # OSHWHub Stars#

Engineering Test Videos:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1x8411x7FG/

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1se4y1n7bn/

Inspired by traditional Chinese Tai Chi culture, the keyboard with innovative Bagua array is designed. The design reference is Raspberry Pi 400, which absorbs the concept of two yi and four elephants, and four elephants and gossip, overcomes the defects of general customized keyboards in terms of arrangement, and realizes a more portable and practical functional design than 400, expanding the functional meaning that the traditional keyboard that gossip determines the good and the bad, and the good and the bad is not the traditional keyboard.

Origin of the name

Not long ago, the Leopold keyboard layout rights protection incident caused a lot of earthquakes in the keyboard circle. On the one hand, everyone was shocked by the speed with which Koreans^[1] applied for patents, and on the other hand, the 98 key probably became an eternal pain in the hearts of friends. For this reason, I also sent a special letter to Leopold to inquire about the original text of the relevant patent, and found that it was only a design patent. Normally, it is not easy to protect innovative content because of the easy copying and strategic bypass of appearance patent infringement, but Big L actually won the lawsuit in Chinese mainland by relying on this, which will probably become a classic rights protection precedent in the keyboard circle in the future. It's just that a lot of friends and businessmen have to rack their brains to think of ways to bypass. However, due to the inertia formed by the habit of using keyboards, the appearance patent just gives full play to the advantage that the appearance is similar and easy to identify, and avoids the disadvantage that the infringement of the structural method patent requires more professional knowledge.

Figure 1. Leopold has granted a patent-protected look and feel for keyboard configurations

Figure 2. Leopold's reply to the letter was very timely, which shows his will to defend his rights

"King Wen detains and plays Zhou Yi", this year coincides with the 3 months of home quarantine in Shanghai due to the epidemic, as the saying goes, "talents are born from ancient prisons", 3 months of time let me have an epiphany from the arrangement of traditional Chinese gossip that there is a more portable and easy-to-use keyboard design, and the ancient symbols seem to be able to remind Korean friends by the way, asking them to respect our traditional culture as if they were their own national flags. Please don't ask what will happen to me if I start a group to make a keyboard with this similar configuration? I don't know, I just know that respect is mutual. I don't, I have respect for my Korean friends who follow the rules.

Figure 3. Comparison between classical collocations

The 61 column can be said to be a very classic configuration, after removing the F row, the ESC key, and all the navigation keys and numeric keypads on the right, it becomes the configuration. Therefore, after most people get the 61 equipped keyboard, his learning and adaptation cost is very low, and it does not take too much time to adapt to reach the usual typing speed, and the error rate is very low even in the case of blind typing. The keyboard 64 configuration is obtained by removing the RAlt key and RWin key on the basis of the 61 column, and adding the direction 4 keys and the Del key (non-left shift 64 is actually 63 key configuration, and the left shift 64 column is really 64 configuration), and because RShift is changed from 2.75U to 1U size, its user experience and habits are not as good as 61 configuration ^[2].

The new keyboard layout design is the most important innovation direction of keyboard customization, because it not only needs to consider what kind of practical problems can be solved by new technologies, but also considers the continuity of user habits. A good collocation design often brings the most basic comfort and happiness to the user, and other innovations are more icing on the cake.

Design goals

In addition to the hidden patent pitfalls that prevent some comfortable designs from being widely used commercially, the price is also an obstacle to the popularization of custom keyboards. How to design a keyboard that is comfortable to use and can meet the most simple needs, but can maintain a reasonable cost and price, has been my pursuit for many years. I consider the most unpretentious needs, including but not limited to:

1. It's light enough to allow me to carry it when I'm out for competitions without feeling like it adds weight to my backpack;

2. It is fully functional, and it is best to have the key functions that I need to use daily;

3. It's better to have only one hand, only to carry my love, but it must be able to switch between multiple computers or terminals conveniently, especially when I need to manually enter the program or command line retrieved on the computer browser into the Raspberry Pi that has just been flashed into the new system;

4. It is better to have some of the functions of a laptop, so that when I go out to participate in the competition, I don't need to bring a laptop, and it is worthy of my sole love;

5. It should also have the potential to expand, so that I can try to test or add novel features to it;

6. It should be cheap enough, like the weapon made by the rabbit that year, cheap, but solid;

7. It's best to be a little girl who can be dressed up, a design, you can get different attributes just by changing the skin, cherry shaft or short shaft, I want it to be both a standard height and a short key travel height, children make a choice, adults of course all want.

The above is my simple very "6+1" demand, which should not be too much. The dream should be there, what if it comes true. Let's start drawing gossip.

Gossip arrangement

Figure 4. The physical location map of the keys of Wang's classic "Bagua Arrangement".

Perhaps by providence, I found that the 8x8 hexagram number that fits the combination of Bagua Yang and Yin can make the keyboard strike a balance between portability and practicality, which is one of the reasons why the keyboard is named Bagua. The portability of the keyboard requires that the number of keys on the keyboard be smaller, lighter and more portable, but the functional completeness of the keyboard requires that the number of keys on the keyboard be as large as possible, richer and more practical.

As mentioned above, the classic 61 configuration is more in line with the user's usage habits because it is inherited from the full configuration, but it lacks some necessary function buttons. The 64 configuration disrupts user habits in some ways, resulting in a slightly higher typing error rate. The patent of the big L is concentrated in the design of the direction 4 keys, of which the 98 key arrangement is the most user-accepted improved configuration. Figure 4 shows the physical distribution of the first generation of keys I designed for the "Bagua Arrangement", which can not only avoid the Macedonian defense line formed by the patented layout of the big L, but also reduce the cost compared to the 4 arrow keys and shaft body by replacing the 4-way buttons by the five-way switch/joystick/handle. At the same time, rotary encoders, five-way switches, dial encoders, and joysticks/handles participate in the Bagua arrangement, and can also add a programmable key position (of course, the complete programming of the encoder will add two pins, which is why I want to mention that the more chip IO pins, the more complete the function), which provides a good solution for the missing button placement in the 61 column. First of all, it should be noted that in order to solve the problem of urgently needing mouse functions when going out with only a keyboard and no mouse (to solve the design goal 2), I first removed the Fn and RMenu keys that are less frequently used in the 61 column, and replaced them with the left and right buttons of the mouse, so that even if I only bring the gossip keyboard when I go out, and I can't borrow the mouse, I have the mouse buttons for emergency use. The large Taiji wheel of the rotary encoder is defined by me as the function of the middle scroll wheel of the mouse, so the mouse is used in an emergency and the function is complete. Of course, some people will question the concept that a custom keyboard itself has multiple layers of key definitions, and it is possible to repeatedly define mouse functions to other keys. Of course, it is technically possible. However, it is necessary to take into account the multi-layer definition of the customized keyboard, mainly to facilitate the switch between multiple tool modes of the keyboard, for the commonly used function keys, if the original only one button is pressed once each time, now you have to press two keys or press twice, which is anti-user habits. With the addition of the mouse function definition, there are also ESC, DEL, and Fn keys that need to be placed, as they are not used very frequently, so they are acceptable to be placed under rotary encoders, five-way switches, dial encoders, and joysticks/joysticks as shown in the previous article and Figure 4. So I think the improved 61 arrangement, that is, the Bagua matching column is better than the 98 configuration of the big L, and the key function of the Bagua matching column is almost complete in terms of function, and it also effectively integrates the mouse definition, which will not make the user feel troubled by the wrong trigger (at most, it is to click the left mouse button or right mouse button in the input text box), or the position of the definition is too strange to adapt. At the same time, the overall number of buttons is smaller, which increases portability (addressing design goal 1).

One of the main uses of the keyboard is to facilitate the people to express their opinions on the Internet. "As long as it is a realistic suggestion and opinion, it is better to block it than to loosen it, which is probably the most misunderstood movement of keyboard warriors that is both empty and conducive to social progress. So this is the second reason why the keyboard is called Bagua and gets its name.

As mentioned earlier, 5x12 is the laziest layout, and I have been drawing 8x8 for a long time, but fortunately, once and for all. If anyone wants to know how Bagua collocations are derived from such connections, I can start a course to demonstrate the logic of design and the skills of drawing.

Figure 5. "Bagua Matching" in the schematic

The schematic diagram of the Bagua matching column cannot name the signal name in Chinese in the professional version, and everyone will look at it. Here are a few important points, let me highlight the following points:

1. Here according to the 8864 columns, each hexagram corresponds to a key definition, note that the difference with the regular configuration is that I have the same definition of LShift and Rshift when the column is similar to 5x12, so as to save the keys, although it is lazy to count two in the regular keyboard drawing.

2. In order to avoid the arrangement patent of the big L, the main feature of the arrow key in the lower right corner is deliberately not used to shift the design of the left direction, but to replace the arrow key with the five-way key or handle to participate in the arrangement. And from the cost consideration, the five-way keys or handles are also more economical than the five keyboard switch bodies + keycaps. There were no duplicate cases before the novelty check, so my design has been patented and accepted, so it will not be held accountable by Big L, and it can be used with confidence.

3. Because of the design of point 2, not every light at the bottom of the button has it, so instead of each of the sixty-four lines corresponds to a lamp. In this way, when the keyboard is used as a divination tool, the upper and lower signs are removed, the so-called negative pole Tailai, good luck and the big murderer are often converted in a thought, so the diviner often speaks of good luck and the big murderer, here you can refer to the plot of Xu Fengnian and Xuanyuan Qingfeng on Wudang Mountain for people to divination, you can find your own make-up class if you haven't read it.

Further, about packaging, let's also mention two points, and the rest of you will find the highlights by yourself:

1. In order to facilitate plugging and unplugging in the development stage of the customized keyboard, the hot-swappable key switch base will be selected, and its overall price is equivalent to a set of ordinary key switches. Here, in order to verify multiple switch models in one plate, two different hot-swappable base packages are deliberately fused, at least the keyboard objects of Logitech GTL and cherry MX can be made separately, which is in line with the principle of running in small steps. (Addressing point 7 of the design goal)

Figure 6. Converged shaft body package

2. Looking at the selected key switch components, you can know that I only put the pins of ordinary LEDs, but when I actually do it, because ws2812 has a richer color combination, it is used in the mainstream. In order to be compatible, the D1 and D2 pins of the ws2812 are all manually pulled and sent to the network, which is very convenient. Moreover, in order to make the wiring concise, the packages of WS2812 on the two key shafts in opposite directions were deliberately mixed.

What are the four elephants?

The four elephants refer to less yin, old yin, less yang, and old yang. It also refers to the spring, summer, autumn and winter that must be experienced in the alternating operation of yin and yang. ^[3]

In my Bagua keyboard design, as shown in Figure 7, the four images refer to the four functions extended through the Hub: one is the main body of the key matrix, one is the touch control board, one is on the right side of the keyboard and can be connected to the mouse in the form of an interface, and one is in the upper left corner of the keyboard, which can be connected to a USB flash drive or other peripherals such as FOC motor knobs (there is no suitable one at present, I will mention how to transform it below), plotter, handwriting tablet, etc. In the patent specification I filed in June this year, I mentioned that the claims contained in CN201020270304.7 (there are only two) "a one-piece keyboard and mouse device with a USB interface, which is characterized in that the USB HUB is integrated into the keyboard, the USB HUB controller is connected to the computer through a connection cable and communicates, and the expansion interface of the USB HUB is connected to the key circuit of the keyboard, the mouse and the external USB interface." "Under this section alone, no similar application with a date after 26 July 2010 should be granted. However, the patent was born at an inopportune time, and due to the lack of practicability and low market value at that time, the invention applicant should have failed to notice that the more meaningful application scenario of the HUB+ keyboard is when the mouse + keyboard + trackpad or other USB device needs to switch frequently back and forth between two computer hosts and/or tablet and/or other embedded motherboards at the same time. When I used the keyboard for the development of Raspberry Pi related projects in my daily life, I noticed the trouble of switching keyboards or wiring at this time, so I designed the Hub four-elephant method, which was before the patent search this year, and in the second half of last year, I designed and produced the Hub chip in the keyboard integration scheme and verified it in the JLC proofing project. CN201020270304.7 The example of a patent illustrates that if a technical solution is to be protected in the form of a patent, it is not good to file it too early or too late.

What are the two instruments?

Liangyi, i.e., yin and yang, are the two opposites of the contradiction of things. I don't like to add another mouse and keyboard to the Raspberry Pi because it takes up too much of the desktop, which is a contradiction. But is it good to use a multi-mode wireless keyboard? All I know is that it often runs out of power when it needs it to work, and I am afraid that it will drop the chain when I take it out of the door. So when the keyboard switches between the computer and the Raspberry Pi, it needs to be fast, and it wants people to live without power, and it is probably very distressing.

I designed a keyboard button to quickly switch between two computers/terminals, so that I can use a keyboard with four elephants to quickly switch to another Raspberry Pi that has just been flashed into the system while looking for information on the computer, and enter the command line on the data (solve design goal 3).

Figure 7. Diagram of the peripheral connection of the Bagua keyboard

Other design elements

1. You can see the rotary encoder keycap on the left side of the keyboard, which is an element of Tai Chi, which can make users feel that they are pushing the rotation of the Tai Chi wheel with one finger when using the keyboard. Just as a butterfly flapping its wings may cause a storm in the Amazon rainforest, the voice of the people in the online world has both positive significance and unexpected destructive power to promote the progress of the times.

2. As shown in the figure, you can see the hollow handle directly above the keyboard, which is not a necessary design element, but it is indeed a design element that is easy to carry. At the same time, the micro:bit base soldered above can be used to fix and power the micro:bit development board or control board. Even if you don't use it to connect to a development board, you can use the space where the handle is hollowed out to place your phone, and at the same time, you can rely on the micro:bit to support the back of your phone, so you can type while looking at your phone. This part has also been patented, and there is a high probability that the claim will be approved.

3. On the right side of the Liangyi button in the upper left corner of the keyboard, there is a Raspberry Pi ZERO/ZERO W mounting position, through the elastic contacts on it and the support of the fixing screws, the Raspberry Pi can directly become one of the two instruments without additional complicated wiring, and go out with the keyboard in a portable way, which provides the possibility of going out for a short-term mobile office without a laptop (to solve the design goal 4）。 So in the upper right corner of the keyboard, I also designed two TF card storage slots, which can be quickly replaced when developing different projects or flashing different systems on the Raspberry Pi, and no longer have to worry about finding a place to keep the TF card. These are not obvious on the 3D rendering above, but the design elements are very clear in the PCB drawing.

4. Divination: Randomly flash the hexagram through the bottom light LED to stop getting the hexagram result at different key positions. The Tx/Rx serial port of the main control has been introduced, and the speech synthesis module can be connected through the serial port in the later stage, and the designing can be read out directly. As mentioned earlier, not every button has a light underneath, so unsigning won't cause any bad psychological cues. Why is modern society in a hurry to seek psychological solace? Probably because everyone is living in more and more uncertainty. The law is a tool for the ruling class to rule the ruled class, but now it is more and more like a joke, like a stick to scare children, put on the shelf, and what is taken out depends on the mood of the ruler and the distance between them. In some places, the floor height of the house is 2.95 meters, which is 5 centimeters less, and the developer awarded more than 600 yuan ^{in compensation [4],} and in some places, the developer can sell the basement with a floor height of only 2.2 meters to you as a normal area without the consumer's knowledge, and the court is quite defensive of the developer. Therefore, when the law and life are becoming more and more uncertain, both good and bad people need more and more psychological solace from divination.

5. One-key rainbow fart: The Tx/Rx serial port of the main control mentioned above is currently free, and the speech synthesis module can be connected through the serial port in the later stage. In addition to being used as a hexagram solution, I can also provide an idea for developing a one-click rainbow fart function (to solve design goal 5^{) [5].}。 Among the factors of social productivity, the substitutability of workers is getting higher and higher, and the importance of labor materials and labor objects is getting lower and lower. Whether the daily work is done well or not is not the most important, nor is the customer dissatisfied, but the leader is not satisfied, it seems that the most important thing is the most important. Based on this, a one-click rainbow fart is simply a rigid need for code farmers who are not good at socializing. If you want to make a fool of yourself, you must repeatedly give full play to the advantages of artificial intelligence and big data, and use the keyboard, the daily productivity tool of code farmers, as a carrier to provide rainbow fart tutors that are not the same, which is indeed a tasteful function. Given that I'm too much for this feature... The ability is limited, so leave this part to the interested readers to develop, and there is no charge for this idea.

Tao born one, life born two, two born three, three born all things

The realization of all hardware functions needs to be injected into the soul of software. However, there are more and more projects that need to be temporarily redeveloped because they are stuck. This is a manifestation of the high development of capitalism and the fierce competition between capitalist countries for resources and markets^[6]. Engels pointed out in particular that socialism cannot be realized first in one or several countries, because capitalism is already a system on a world scale, and only by destroying this system on a world scale can we make the transition to socialism. The days when Eagle Sauce crossed the river by feeling the stones, and the days when the rabbit crossed the river by touching Eagle Sauce are about to be gone forever. Since the software and the main control are one-to-one correspondence, it is necessary to prepare for future price wars and being stuck. Any customized keyboard innovation is a dissatisfaction with the monopoly of the means of production and the production process by big capital, and I think it is a phased product. Technological innovation is a thankless task from this point of view because individual productivity increases due to innovation, and the term of protection of a patent is only 10 years, or at most 20 years, which is not as long as the protection of copyright. According to the foundations of classical political economy, the value of a commodity is the labor time condensed on the commodity. The same is a programmer, a programmer in the industrial field is not as well paid as a programmer in the financial field, but it cannot be said that a programmer in the industrial field has fewer labor hours than a programmer in the financial field. On the contrary, the reason for this phenomenon is that the financial sector creates more value than the industrial sector, and it is more appropriate to use the word "transfer" than "creation" here, which is also one of the manifestations of the intensification of international capitalist competition. Machine production excludes human labour, and the fact that human labour itself is becoming devoid of surplus value is accelerating^[7]. On the bright side, this is where the hope for the future of the production relations organized by the JLC model lies.

In order not to get stuck on the main control and firmware, I designed the Bagua keyboard to be a placement mode with a replaceable main control board, and am trying to design a variety of main control boards for it that can be replaced by chips, as shown in Figure 8. At present, the Raspberry Pi Pico official board, Pico replica board, ESP32 revision (wireless) design verification has been completed, because of the openness of the Bagua keyboard, it can be compatible with more chips in the future, so the probability of being stuck by the main control and firmware is relatively low.

Figure 8. The main control board that the Bagua keyboard can support: the official Raspberry Pi Pico, Pico replica, and ESP32 revised main control board

"Avatar" becomes the appearance of "Hanwen keyboard"

For the recently popular FOC knobs, especially the independent knobs, I also try to achieve a PCB motor, in order to achieve a silkier feel than a rotary encoder without increasing weight and charging and discharging modules.

Why did you choose to use words like "avatar" instead of "fork"? I guess "remastering" usually refers to a creative imitation of the original, often in some way better than the original, and I would try to avoid such an unassuming term. In various religions, it usually refers to supernatural forces such as gods or elves, which appear in the human world in a certain way in the form of humans or animals, which is consistent with the context of Tao and Bagua. Most of the chips and technical routes I use are different from those of the "Hanwen Keyboard", so it may be more appropriate to use the "Avatar".

I was very impressed, at 9 o'clock in the morning on the day the first version of the "Bagua" keyboard proofing was sent, Zhihuijun released a video to make his "Hanwen keyboard", and everyone's attention was very high, and I also followed it to learn it. "Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things." I think that the Tao can be eclectic, and the "Bagua" keyboard must also be "Avatar" into the mimicry of the "Hanwen keyboard" in some way, otherwise how can it be worthy of the name of "Three Lives and All Things"?

The characteristics of "Hanwen Keyboard" are very prominent, and the two most obvious points are: 1. The keyboard uses multiple extended IO chips for layout and layout, and 2. The FOC motor is integrated into the keyboard as a characteristic knob. Other features include an ink screen, a touch sensor for the space bar, and more. First of all, multiple extended IO chips are arranged in a row, which I will not use when making my own keyboard, because I am lazy. A lazy person like me usually has a typing speed of up to 130 words per minute, and the high scanning speed of the "Hanwen" keyboard is not needed for me. Moreover, I use the "gossip" arrangement, which can be lazy to pay attention to some unnecessary disputes on the patent, and it is also more in line with my design direction of portability. Secondly, the function of the touch sensor of the space bar and the trackpad is similar, and there are more differences in the position, while the ink screen is more suitable for the application scenario with a low refresh rate, and I will not consider introducing the keyboard for the time being. Therefore, the "Avatar" keyboard should be similar to the "Avatar" keyboard, and it is probably mainly necessary to overcome the technical points of the FOC motor knob.

At first, I also didn't think it made much sense for the FOC motor knob to be introduced into the keyboard, especially since Zhihuijun mentioned that in order to introduce it, an additional circuit to store power should be provided to power it. And the introduction of a motor into the keyboard is already very heavy, if you add the weight of the lithium battery...... A lazy person like me, who pursues it as a carrier, is extremely rejected. Later, I carefully studied the FOC motor, and found that it is not impossible, but it seems more ideal to treat it as a peripheral independent of the keyboard and not participate in portability. For example, SmartKnob ^[8] and Super Dial ^[9], which were open-sourced earlier this year。 But as a top boss, it will not be hasty for Zhihuijun to introduce the FOC motor into the keyboard, there must be his considerations, although USB power supply and weight are indeed big problems. So I thought about it again, in fact, if the feedback force of the motor is not too large, it is also possible to reduce the driving power, so I decided to take the PCB motor to try the effect of FOC. PCB motor is a low-torque motor designed with the motor stator on the PCB, and there are two technical routes that can be found publicly, one is a piezoelectric ceramic-based ultrasonic motor, which is mainly used in camera aperture autofocus, but it is difficult to purchase this kind of patch piezoelectric ceramic device online in China, and it is stuck in the neck if it is DIY. So I used the second PCB coil method motor to test. The most well-known technical route is open source by foreign Xiaoge ^[10]. But judging from his open source information, the special price process of the PCB of the jlc factory is not in line with him, so I drew another drawing and proofing. From the test video, it can be seen that when it is rotated as a knob, the torque is very small, the damping is very small, and the magnetic sensor is also very sensitive, but fixing it requires further improvement of the structural design. When used as a driven element, the PCB motor also has good controlled steering (here we would like to thank light for the helpful discussion of the PCB motor driver and PID control). Therefore, the PCB motor is feasible as a replacement for the FOC motor on the "Hanwen" keyboard, and the weight is much lighter, the only thing to note is that it does not provide a large torque torque, so it is not suitable for the knob design of some game functions that require a force feedback experience.

Figure 9. The weight and diameter of the PCB motor knob

In this way, if I want to use the "Bagua" keyboard to "Avatar", a "Hanwen keyboard", the cost is about 600 yuan, and similar functions can be achieved. It should be emphasized that the customized keyboard is a transition stage between innovative design and industrial batch products, which meets the personalized needs and the verification of innovative design, and it is impossible to achieve the price and performance stability of industrial batch products. In addition, many innovative designs of customization are the initial stage of future industrial products, and it is a necessary stage to help industrial products improve customer needs. But they were so different in the early days. Therefore, big industries need to respect their "baby form" and not bully the small. Because to protect innovation is to protect the future of big industry.