hey everyone Jason here a few years ago
I posted a Lego computer keyboard I
designed around an old membrane keyboard
I had lying around and ever since then
I've wanted to build a version using
mechanical key switches for superior
performance and I finally got around to
this only three and a half years later
and this is the result and let's just
jump right in and show you how I built
it for the core components I just pulled
out the circuit board from this
coolermaster quick-fire which has Cherry
MX brown key switches on it I actually
probably would have preferred blue but
you know you get what you get it's a
little bit of an older model as I just
wanted something simple and relatively
cheap so it doesn't have full
backlighting or anything fancy like that
although there are a few LED switches on
it with the caps lock scroll lock and
windows lock keys here is the Lego frame
I built to house it it's extremely
simple it's just a layer of plates on
the bottom which are connected together
with another layer of tiles that span
the seams on the inside the back and the
sides are just built up using basic
plates and bricks with some panel pieces
on the sides to make it easier to lift
the keyboard up and move it around for
the front I'm using these curved slopes
oriented on their ends just to give it a
little bit more interesting profile and
they are connected to these brackets
this is the breakout board that has the
USB connector on it and actually did
sacrifice a few Lego tiles to mount it I
just screwed it right into them to give
it a nice solid connection for
connecting and disconnecting the USB
cable now so that I did a nice little
arch in the back to give clearance for
the cable
there are a couple of 1x1 cones in the
base which line up with these holes in
the circuit board which just rests nice
and snugly into the Lego frame and
here's the top part of the frame which
helps the board in place and also fills
up some of the spaces between the keys
as you can see I went with an old-school
Lego color scheme with red yellow and
these blue I guess racing stripes to
help me type faster on to the most
important part which of course are the
keys and for that it recruited my
brother who is a mechanical engineer to
design these Lego compatible cherry MX
key caps most of the ones I'm using on
the keyboard are black actually all of
them are black but I do have these white
prototype ones which might be a little
bit easier to see as you can see they're
pretty much the equivalent of a 2x2
Lego plate which is conveniently about
the same size as a standard keyboard key
and they have a cherry MX stem
underneath so that you can easily add
some small Lego pieces or tiles onto the
top of them and just sit them right on
the key switches he also added a hole
into each of them so for the key
switches that do have LEDs you can put a
transparent tile on top for the light to
shine through he uploaded the design of
these two shapeways which is where I had
them printed and I'll add some links in
the description and more details over on
my website for anyone who might be
interested in getting some for their own
keyboard he also designed some other
sizes for me all the way from 2x3 up to
2 by 14 studs for the special keys in
the space bar and here's the keyboard
with all the keys added I reused a few
of the tiles that I used from my
original keyboard on this one for
example I'm still using the baseball cap
with caps lock the roof tile for the
home key the guy running away from the
dinosaur for the Escape key but I did
make some significant changes for
example I decided to do away with the
letter tiles entirely since I don't look
at the keyboard when I'm typing anyway
instead I made this small little mosaic
just both the word Lego
which I thought was pretty appropriate
and I still have the jumper plates for
the F and the H keys so I can find them
by touch I also tried to do a little bit
of color blocking based on functionality
so most of the navigation keys are
yellow example tab backspace enter space
arrow keys and the page up page down
most of the control keys are white
including the Escape key and the print
screen etc over here and pretty much
everything else is mostly black there
are some exceptions of course just like
with my previous keyboard design I
limited myself to using print tiles that
have only been produced by Lego over the
years so no sticker tiles or custom
prints of course if I ever decide to
change any of them or actually add the
letter tiles for the letter keys it'll
be really easy to do I just need to pop
them off and replace them and that is
about all there is to it as I said I
have been meaning to build this for
quite a while so I'm happy that it's
finally finished and it works a lot
better than the original one I built
which incidentally I took apart about a
year ago which is why I don't have it
out here for comparison I may still
tweak the frame a little bit maybe try
and make the design a little more
interesting but of course the beauty of
it all being design of LEGO pieces of
that will be really easy to change as
always thanks for watching keep on
building and I'll see you next time
[Applause]