Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

This story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

Converting (Another!) Folding Keyboard Into Bluetooth

There is a ton of neat old technology out there, and not all of it has to end up as e-waste. You might remember this post about a cool old folding keyboard converted to Bluetooth for use with phones and tablets.

[Xinming Chen] wrote in to alert me that not only are there other folding keyboards that were made for PDA devices back when, namely the G750; he has converted these to Bluetooth as well.

There were a bunch of different models sold under various names, but [Xinming] says as long as the keyboard looks the same, it should work with his adapter. The biggest difference is that the G750 itself uses inverted TTL for the RX line, while other models do not.

The really amazing part of this is the actual build itself, which fits in the smaller-than-a-Shuffle footprint of the original PDA connector. Naturally, [Xinming] had to roll his own PCB, which is based on the CH582F microcontroller. But another awesome bit is the micro-switch, which turns on the Bluetooth module when the keyboard is unfolded, and off when it is pushed back together. The whole deal is a really slick maneuver that you should check out in the demo video below.

Whether you build or buy one of these adapters, you don’t have to limit yourself to one device: the CH582F can support up to four hosts as well as the USB connection, so feel free to use it like a KVM switch. Awesome!

The Centerfold: Peep This Beautiful Beast!

So I was trawling reddit and came across someone asking for the 3D models for these hand rests. I was of course myself more interested in the keyboard, which is a 6×6 dactyl manuform (translated) with an extended num pad in between. That’s quite a few keys, innit? 38 keys per half plus the center beast at 30; I assume the black things are knobs. On a personal note, as much as I like the dactyl and even tried to build one, the dactyl manuform’s thumb cluster just looks uncomfortable to my small hands.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Lasar

Just like any burgeoning, lucrative industry, many entered the typewriter game, but few actually won. Among history’s many forgotten typewriters and the men who made them is the Lasar, made between 1890-1892 by the Godfrey Henry Lasar of St. Louis, MO.

Lasar held an impressive number of patents for various typewriter elements, including one for a “telegraph transmitter”. For the Lasar itself, he received a whopping 17 patents in a single day  — November 19, 1889.

For all of Lasar’s innovation, his company did almost no marketing, which may have attributed to its downfall. Fortunately, several ads were published by the St. Louis Typewriter exchange. Unfortunately, most of them ran after the company went out of business.

The Lasar sold for $75, which comes out to over $2500 in 2024 money. This is about smack dab in the middle of the average cost for a typewriter at the time, however.

One of the reasons it may have failed is because it only typed uppercase, but every other guy’s machine did lowercase, too. One of Lasar’s Lasar patents is for a shift mechanism, but he didn’t implement it. It is thought that the Lasar was always meant to be a telegraph typewriter, and was even advertised as “the Best Machine for Telegraph Work”. The world may never know.

ICYMI: the Case For the Vecdec Cyberdeck

As awesome as cyberdecks are to behold, many of them just aren’t that useful. It’s a shame, really. But [svenscore]’s Versatile Ergonomic Computing device, or vecdec, is different.

Hackaday’s own [Tom Nardi] spotted this bad boy at JawnCon 0x1, where it was being used in place of a laptop. This build was born when [svenscore] caught the split keyboard bug and couldn’t reconcile going back to a rectangle on the go. Totally understandable!

Despite its sleek form factor, this Raspberry Pi 4-powered cyberdeck has a few surprises. One is the built-in LoRa radio for doing Meshtastic wherever. The other is a pair of gesture sensors that let you fly through documents with a wave of your hand like you’re in Minority Report (2002) or something. If you ask me, this interface should be standard on every cyberdeck going forward.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.