Play along - create a PinePhone keyboard

[x0r]

@Luke didn't see any keyboard news in the Sep news release. Last update was 3 prototypes being examined, any updates?

;-) ha ha

[Luke]

@Luke didn't see any keyboard news in the Sep news release. Last update was 3 prototypes being examined, any updates?

No, no updates I'm afraid - I've been rather busy in the month of August, so I may have missed an internal communication re. this particular topic.
I'll revisit this in November for sure.

[SwordfishII]

@Luke didn't see any keyboard news in the Sep news release. Last update was 3 prototypes being examined, any updates?

No, no updates I'm afraid - I've been rather busy in the month of August, so I may have missed an internal communication re. this particular topic.
I'll revisit this in November for sure.

Awesome, thank you. The keyboard was the tipping (err typing) point for my purchase. Will probably buy at least one more phone after it releases and keyboard to go with both.

[x0r]

No, no updates

q.e.d.

If @Luke are busy, meybe other developer write some information in this forum? What do you like about our ideas, we would prefer if we had a choice. Can the keys on the outside of the keyboard be? Or will there be a mouse, trackpad etc.?

[regnarg]

The TOHKBD layout seems absolutely awesome, I'd totally buy one. It seems that these guys really tought the issue of a mobile keyboard through, instead of blindly copying the PC layout with some minor changes. Especially the navigation block and the layout of modifier keys seems very promising. For example you can easily press combinations like alt+arrow, ctrl+end etc!

[NO_ob]

Here is a picture of the Aigo P8880E UMPC which was released in 2009

Similar construction to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO
But stil 4 in vertical, why not 5 or 6 (similar in normal keyboard)?

still many space in main enclosure.

I agree. Something like the keyboard of GPD Win might be good. It has 5 rows and common symbols don't need the Fn key. I just hate the Fn key being at the left most position. Should switch Ctrl and Fn.

I think a keyboard more like the gemini pda would be much better for typing on https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/gemini-pda

[DrewTechs]

https://www.ti.com/product/TCA8424

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tca8418.pdf

https://www.sprintek.com/en/products/key...px?ad=bing

Will we theoretically be able to design a keyboard with this component? I wish I could just get one I can insert onto a breadboard but these i2c devices seem to only be for PCB boards which means that I would need a development board for it. Once I got that I can test a circuit setup on the ATmega328PB and/or on a Raspberry Pi.

[wibble]

Look up dead bug prototyping - it's rarely pretty but usually works. Did you pick that one because it already has a kernel driver, or is that just good luck?

mobian@mobian:~$ zgrep TCA8418 /proc/config.gz
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_TCA8418 is not set

[DrewTechs]

Look up dead bug prototyping - it's rarely pretty but usually works. Did you pick that one because it already has a kernel driver, or is that just good luck?

mobian@mobian:~$ zgrep TCA8418 /proc/config.gz
# CONFIG_KEYBOARD_TCA8418 is not set

So the TCA8418 is somewhat supported on the kernel level? That means that it would be the appropriate component to use.

[wibble]

It would appear so - see kernel source and docs covering the devicetree entries:
drivers/input/keyboard/tca8418_keypad.c
Documentation/devicetree/bindings/input/tca8418_keypad.txt
Documentation/devicetree/bindings/input/matrix-keymap.txt