A low-tech hack to help the crappy keyboard

[rogerroger]

Thanks for leaving the idea here. I decided to try it out since I have a first-run Pinebook with this problem. I cut up the plastic shipping case my eMMC came in to make a splint. It is about the same size as the spacebar so I figured it would be a good fit.




I taped two layers together. The piece is about 85mm x 22mm x 2mm; I rounded off the edges too to make sure it doesn't slip and stab part of the laptop. Then I taped it in with some electrical tape, under the spacebar and battery.




I can vouch that on my Pinebook, the battery does seem to have a hinge in the middle; it seems like it's actually two sub-batteries taped together. By luck the splint fits just about on one side of the hinge. You can see that I just taped it in with some electrical tape; that plus the pressure from the case is holding it in place.

I tried a few different positions and sizes. I decided that 2mm was as thick as I wanted to risk making mine and that right at the corner of the battery pack was the best spot. It isn't perfect, it still misses space bar presses sometimes, and it's worse for friends who have daintier typing styles than me, but it definitely helps: before, the Pinebook was almost unusable, I would always need to be correcting mistakes in my command lines; now, it's only 1/20 or less. The far left side of the spacebar is still bad because the battery pack doesn't cover that section so there's no pressure there, so I just have to train myself to press space with my right thumb more often.

I experimented with putting the split between the battery and spacebar, and like that I could push it out further left and still have some pressure applied. Maybe it's my imagination but it did seem to work better, but I also feared that would be a good way to strip the screws holding the battery in place so I decided against it in the end.

[bancha]

After some period of time, it got me on my nervs too. My Pinebook has a peace of wood too now, haha. Impressive.

It is working as expected, since I've added the wood parts underneath the Left CTRL, Left Shift and right Arrow keys.

My theroy is a bit different than the ones before, with placing a peace of wood on the battery itself. It is way better to fill the gap/room underneath the bottom left and bottom right space, just around the Left CTRL key and right Arrow keys. The reason is, that the flexible casing has way too much room left at those spots. Just placing your hand on those spots, the entire plastic case starts to bend and therfor moves the sensible trigger parts of the keyboard.

Wholesome regards