I had a gemini PDA made by Planet Computers. The poor device’s fate was gruesome. It had the worst luck.
I did a dissection of the device today and extracted the keyboard assembly with hopes of finding a part number. My suspicion was that the device was made of generic off-the-shelf components from china. Wellp - nothing useful was found.
I have a hope yalls smart folk may have an idea.
I am working on a personal pet project and looking for mini-keyboards suitable for thumb typing and compatible with the arduino platform. I’m sure many of them would be compatible, but anyway.
Kinda. What I"m looking for is like the keyboard in the image. I’m building a device where the keyboard will be embedded much like an old blackberry.
To give you some background, I’m an avid user of BBS’s and often have difficulty typing clearly on my touchscreen tablet. And carrying around a bluetooth keyboard is wonky. I’m building a device on the arduino platform inspired by the arduboy. The device loads a quick menu on powerup and you go through the menus to pick a game.
My device isn’t geared for gaming but for telnet/ssh into a bbs. I want an integrated keyboard and it’ll fold shut like the gemini does and the shell will be 3d printed. I have friends in the bbs world who want one too so I"ll probably have about ten made.
Ultimately, I’m looking for a source that sells component keyboards like the one I posted. Any ideas?
the keyboard posted looks way larger than a Blackberry device keyboard. It does not look like a “thumb” keyboard. The one I posted a link to fits over the bottom of a Handspring Visor PDA so it’s in the size range of the Blackberry. it might look think but it is mostly hollow an all the components are on one face where the buttons are with only a connector on the bottom of to interface to the connector on the bottom of the Handspring Visor PDA.
But if you’re looking for a larger chiklet type of keyboard, there should be lots of options. There were some folding ones for PalmOS based devices but they opened into larger size keyboard. Google is probably your best bet, using image search to see what’s out there.
Yeah I’ve been doing alot of searching to no real avail. Yeah google’s my friend and if it yielded the results I’d hoped for I wouldn’t be asking other makers.
The keyboard i posted is really small and used on the gemini PDA. It is quite appropriate for thumb typing. I spoke of a style, not size. I’d conider blackberry keys to be a bit small for the purpose I"m looking for. This device is currently in production. I chose to move away from it because the aluminum shell bends really easily and, once bent, it loses structural integrity quickly.
