- This is a wireless keyboard, right?
That's what it says on the website and on the box.
So then why does it have a wire hanging off of it?
Oh, for the battery, you say.
Oh, well, that explains it.
No, that explains nothing!
It not only fails to eliminate a wire from my desk,
it costs more and it needs to be unplugged occasionally
in order to keep the battery healthy.
Calling this an improvement
over a wired keyboard is an outright lie.
The most baffling part is
that we live in a world that has wireless power.
Smartphones have had wireless charging for so long
that even devices made in North Korea support it.
So, what is preventing keyboard manufacturers
from going true wireless?
Well, as it turns out, nothing.
For the price of this tiny waffle maker, we can quickly
and easily turn nearly any wireless keyboard into, well,
an actually wireless keyboard.
Why hasn't this become a standard?
What are the pitfalls and how can we avoid them?
And what are our different options to turn this keyboard
from a liar into a good, honest peripheral?
The answer to all three is,
after this message from our sponsor.
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Most wireless power solutions use electromagnetic induction,
which sounds fancy but the principle is fairly simple.
A moving magnet near a coil
of wire will generate an electrical current
in the aforementioned wire.
And conversely,
when an electric current passes through a coil,
it generates a magnetic field.
So, by pulsing electricity through one coil,
you can create a pulsing or changing magnetic field
so that when a second coil is placed near it,
it will generate an electrical current without a wire.
The double conversion means
that wireless charging is not particularly efficient,
which limits your total power.
And compared to what you might see in the comic books,
magnetic force is only effective
over relatively short distances.
But the good news is
that the keyboard community hasn't taken the NVIDIA approach
to product design, yet.
And with only a few exceptions,
people keep their keyboards planted fairly firmly
on their desks.
Desks that can be equipped with wireless power modules.
Of course, we need a way to receive said wireless power.
Enter this.
It costs us less than 15 bucks on Amazon.
And if we had the patience, devices like it,
actually, this seems to be the exact same one,
can be had for as little as two US dollars on Ali Express.
It's a five watt receiver, that is plenty for our keyboard.
And inside it, we'll find an oblong coil,
a graphite pad to reflect the magnetic field back
for a strong connection, and a small circuit board.
This one is primarily marketed for old smartphones
or those with broken Qi charging systems.
But in practice, it works
to charge any five volt type C device up to one amp.
Other similar coils can do two amps or 10 watts
and cost just a few dollars more.
And the upcoming Qi2 standard claims 15 watts
will be the new maximum.
I'm ready for you, toaster keyboard.
Sort of.
While this all-in-one sealed-up solution is simple,
it does present some challenges.
What if your keyboard's charging port is in a place
that makes it impractical to slide this underneath it?
What if your cable plugs in right above or beside the feet,
and you like typing at an angle?
Or what if you just hate having a thin black wire?
What if you
just hate having a thin black wire running down the side
of your otherwise sleek perfect mechanical input device?
Thankfully, there's no need to settle when you can metal.
With a few simple solder joints, you can attach.
(Linus chuckling)
There it is.
One of these directly to the USB port
while hiding the entire solution neatly inside the case
for your keyboard.
It's the same electronics as that external one,
but without the type C connector, the thin plastic casing,
and, oh, did I mention that they're even cheaper?
Getting a keyboard open usually involves removing some or.
(Linus grunting)
Should be leaving these.
- [Tanner] In order?
- Once all the screws are out, opening the board should be
as simple as popping the clips.
Come on.
Come on!
Cool.
Oh, spoiler.
Movie magic.
Once you've got the board open,
it should reveal a small circuit board
that the USB port attaches to.
And if you're really lucky at this stage,
you'll find test pads that are clearly labeled.
Usually something like VCC, VBUS or V+.
And that would be for the positive connection.
Sometimes though, you'll be left guessing.
If you have to guess, a multi-meter and a type C
to USB 2.0 type A cable
that you don't use anymore will make quick work
of things.
Simply, violently decapitate the type A end of the cable,
plug it in, prod the positive pin,
and then use your other probe to poke at the test pads
until you get that sweet, sweet beep of continuity.
Now, at this stage, deciding where
to place the charging coil is gonna be very dependent
on your keyboard and on your personal preferences.
But one thing that you will need to keep
in mind when weighing placement options is
that you want the distance between your transmitter coil,
wherever that will be, and your receiver coil,
which will be inside your keyboard,
to be as short as possible.
If you're planning to charge your keyboard wirelessly
while you use it, which I would strongly recommend
because it's awesome,
it means you never have to think about it again,
the safest place
to put this would be down near the space bar.
Even with the feet of the keyboard up,
the wrist area is going to be designed to be
as close to the desk as possible.
Once you've got your coil's new home picked out
and your solder points mapped,
you just use some Kapton tape to stick it down
and solder it all together.
You may have to change the wire out, by the way.
Out of the box, it's not very long,
but fun tech tip, if you don't have any spools
of wire kicking around because you don't do this very often,
you can always harvest some wire from that USB cable
that you just ruined, or from a CAT5e cable
that's lying around with broken clips
or something like that.
Then it should be as simple as putting it all back together
and you should have yourself a truly wireless keyboard.
Let's test drive it.
Right, now I just need a way to get power to it.
Ah, yes, this thing.
Very cool.
How does it?
Oh, my God, I have to screw it into the bottom of the table?
- [Tanner] Or tape it.
(multimeter beeping)
Yep, that's correct.
(multimeter beeping)
- Okay.
Well, rock on, brother.
Oh, hey, hey, hey.
Whoa, what's that?
It's a doing a something.
- [Tanner] So you got it on high right now?
- Yeah.
- [Tanner] Put it on low.
- Ah.
(Windows notification sound)
(keyboard thudding)
(rock music)
I was about to say that I think maybe this wood
or whatever just doesn't something.
Anyway, the point is, my phone charges.
So that's not the problem.
Let's take the keyboard back again.
- [Tanner] Oh look!
Look, it did a.
Yep, there it goes.
- Oh, it's working!
Now I just can't move this hand or this keyboard at all.
You know what?
Is the keyboard just charged?
- [Tanner] Oh.
(Tanner laughing)
- That would explain why it pulses for a second
and then it's like, "Nope."
'Cause it's charged.
But the next stage is to see
if it will work through our Northern Lights desk pad.
lttstore.com.
Okay, ready?
Come on.
Come on, buddy.
Can you do it?
I know you know how to do the trick!
Don't make me look like a fool.
You're so grounded.
We've got it!
It's working!
Okay, we can confirm by restarting it,
and it should pulse.
Okay, I swear to God, this is the right spot.
It doesn't matter.
The savvy among you have probably noticed
by now that our solution requires the keyboard
to be placed pretty precisely for power.
And some keyboards use a metal chassis,
so Qi charging wouldn't be an option for those at all.
That's what they want you to think!
There is a keyboard with wireless charging built in.
You can put it pretty much wherever you want
on the accompanying desk mat and it's made of metal.
The Angry Miao Cyberboard is built
like a 1960s refrigerator, but wait,
if we look at the bottom, what's this?
A plexiglass window with the charging coil in it?
Crazy, right?
But so is the price.
I mean, it's a really cool solution.
The pad uses 15 coils to improve placement flexibility,
but by the times you've got the matching set,
keyboard and pad, you'll have spent nearly 1100 US dollars.
And that's if you can even get your hands on them.
So that's not a real solution.
And even if they used a lower cost implementation like ours,
the power delivery side of things is going
to turn off a lot of people.
The range of our Kew Labs UTS-1,
which is designed to go under the desk
rather than only through a tiny thin pad, is up to one inch,
allowing it to comfortably penetrate most desktops.
But as you guys already saw,
it can still be a little bit finicky for placement.
I mean, with the phone, it's a little bit better.
I'm able to line it up pretty well.
And it's still expensive.
It costs 150 US dollars.
At least this demo was supposed to show how it's easier
to line up with the phone.
Hello, buddy.
But in spite of these costs and design challenges,
we still don't think there's any excuse.
I mean, we already showed that it costs about $2
to add the power receiving side
to a keyboard like the MX Mechanical Mini.
So that shouldn't increase the price
by something like this by more than a couple percent.
And while this might be a little janky,
even by our standards, we built a proof
of concept charging pad that shouldn't cost more
than a hundred bucks at retail.
We just taped, oh, there it is,
nine charging coils onto a piece of cardboard.
And then if you watch, we just put it under one
of our stylish Northern Lights desk pads.
Hey!
And the point is, this proof of concept works.
I mean, it's not great, but it works.
Bottom line then, Angry Miao makes high quality products,
but we shouldn't have to rely on a premium niche brand
to develop a feature that has been standard
in other tech for upwards of a decade.
What is it, Logitech?
What are you afraid of, Razor?
I mean, heck, even Apple should have been on top
of this by now.
Legitimately, this is a real question.
If you guys know why no one has done this,
please let us know in the comments below.
If you go ahead and use the DIY option
to add wireless charging to your keyboard, hey,
let us know how it went in the LTT Forum thread
that's linked in the description.
Perhaps we could use that thread as a bit of a repository
for others who are seeking out a truly wireless life.
One idea that I've actually been toying with
for a while is embedding the wireless charger
in the tabletop surface so that I don't have to deal
with one of these high power through the desk ones.
And then taking my Logitech power play mat
and then embedding that, like routing out the shape of it
and embedding that on the surface,
and then just laying a desk mat over the entire thing.
How stealthy would that be?
Stealthy like the segue to our sponsor.
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If you guys liked this video, maybe check out the time
that we used Wi-Charge to power a toy train.
It really did seem like wireless power
throughout the room was just over the horizon.
But as far as we can tell,
they haven't really gone anywhere since then.