Future Ideas for the Hacked Choc Mini

Future Ideas

I’d really love to make this wireless, like the Apple keyboard I’m replacing. Perhaps I could use something like the BlueGiga connected to the ATmega. I wonder if I could stuff both boards and some batteries into the existing Choc Mini case. (Ideally, I’d make a single, purpose-designed PCB for the AVR chip, the WT12 Bluetooth chip, and the connector(s) to go to the switch matrix. But that’s more work!) I’d want to make battery replacement easy, too. But that’ll have to be a future project.

The trim around the edge of the keyboard also seems unnecessarily high. My thumb hits the trim around bottom side when I press the space bar. Perhaps I could machine an aluminum piece to replace it, bringing the keyboard just a little closer to the look of the original Apple wireless keyboard it’s intended to replace.

Of course, I also plan to use this keyboard as a test bed for ideas in my continuing quest for the perfect Macintosh keyboard. For instance, how annoying will it be to have some of the Right Shift key eaten into by the up arrow? That kind of thing will help determine which of the two layouts I originally designed is closer to ideal. Of course, I may eventually decide that the staggered key layout (which was critical to the design of mechanical typewriters, but anachronistic today) is just not ideal, and want to switch to a more natural matrix layout, in which case I guess I’ll be designing my next keyboard entirely from scratch.