Submitted 9 months ago by nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/15d89ae5-f733-4680-8b19-bb1d410e6090.jpeg
It is from an old Dell Inspiron laptop. Is there a way to use this as a wired keyboard (could not find any way on the internet)? Or maybe use it as something else?
A bit cliché and it might not look great around the handle, but wash it and wrap it around a tall+wide enough mug?
That’s a pretty good idea. However, I removed individual keys and will make something with those letters.
Nice! Just make sure it has a flared ba… I mean, I’m happy you found a use!
It would be trivial to use as an ugly external keyboard for a compatible laptop, but to use it as USB is probably not as easy as hooking it to a standard motherboard header so it’ll cost more than a cheap keyboard to get working.
Install Skyrim on it to appease the Todd Howard?
Or Doom if you worship the Romero.
Put it in a laptop
Smash the fash?
You might consider testing its viability as a Frisbee.
I’m curious what happened to the rat of the laptop?
Not impossible but more pain than it’s probably worth, unless you really want to dive in for the experience and challenge:
Here is a solution to enable laptop bottom case keyboards as USB keyboards using a Teensy microcontroller. The author has tested a wide variety of keyboard models, including Dell Inspiron, HP Presario, Sony Vaio, and IBM / Lenovo ThinkPad.
A typical laptop keyboard relies on the motherboard for the scanning circuitry. I use a Teensy microcontroller mounted on a connector board to take over this function.
hackaday.com/…/teensy-liberates-the-thinkpad-keyb…
Frank Adams liked the keyboard on his Lenovo ThinkPad T61 so much that he decided to design an adapter so he could use it over USB with the Teensy microcontroller. He got the Trackpoint working, and along the way managed to add support for a number of other laptop boards as well. Before you know it, he had a full-blown open source project on his hands.
Links for this project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PheqSNNP8 https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-USB-Laptop-Keyboard-Controller/ https://github.com/thedalles77/USB_Laptop_Keyboard_Controller
A Teensy board would cost a lot more than a really nice new keyboard. Thanks for this guide, though. It helped me learn a lot.
Raspberry pi pico
Sure. It wasn’t my guide, just the first thing I found on Google.
Depends on how much of a DIY guy you are. Overall, trying to make a separate keyboard out of it isn’t worth the hassle. Just put it in the box where you store things that you can’t just throw away and that “surely will be handy eventually” and forget about it :)
I need you to change your editorial direction as I’m in this comment.
TheFANUM@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No