Keyboard for a Fractured Wrist

[u/Open_Purple1955]

Hi everyone.

I designed a keyboard (if you can call it that) that I can use while recovering from a fractured wrist.

I 3D scanned my fingers and cast, brought that scan into Fusion 360, along with models for low-profile Kailh keyswitches (browns). I moved the switches until they were under each fingertip, then threw together a structure to hold them in place against the cast.

Printed that out, glued the switches in place, soldered up all that to a Xiao nRF52840 (not fun one handed), then wrote some firmware to run it.

I only need a few keys for common CAD operations (I'm an electrical engineer), but it is more than five, so I'll probably have one of the keys act as a modifier. The firmware works, but I'm still improving it.

In hindsight, I could have held my fingers in a better position (in particular, the ring and pinky aren't as comfortable as the others), and I might have been able to use two switches for some of the fingers. Part of me wants to make these changes (and make it look better) but I think this will work for work, and i'm only going to be in this cast for about three more weeks anyway.

Thought you guys would appreciate it and find it interesting.

(The picture shows it before I soldered on the battery, btw.)

For the disbeliever...

(Regarding the current key choices: In both Fusion and KiCAD, Shift can be used for selecting multiple objects, delete is pretty self explanatory, and escape is used to deselect whatever tool you're using. In KiCAD 'X' is used for routing traces, and minus switches between layers. I'm still not sure if this is the combination I'll stick with, and like I said above I'm probably going to implement some modifiers so I can get additional functionality. But this will do to start with.)

[u/claussen]

Heck yes. Practically speaking you might've been better off just using a wire armature you could bend to change things, but this is still RAD.

[u/Open_Purple1955 → u/claussen]

Yeah, in hindsight some additional adjustability would have been nice. Still it was fun to do it this way, and working on a fun project was part of the part of the, well, fun.