Work in Progress: Handwired keyboard with a big dumb button

Mom, can we have battleship?

We have battleship at home.

The battleship at home…

Okay, so technically this battleship is still in drydock, but I soldered 117 keys/buttons. I get to put the keycaps on early if I want!

The big dumb button should run the command sudo rm -rf /*

Don’t forget --no-preserve-root

Good thinking. I dual boot. Maybe just to be safe I should also have it run an elevated privilege command prompt and run del C:\Windows as well.

What’s the big dumb button going to do?

I don’t know yet. I just know I wanted a big dumb button.

There’s so many normal dumb buttons on this one that I’m running out of ideas. You got any?

It plays a sound that says, and displays a popup which reads: “Please do not press this button again. Thank you.”

I’ve found that mapping a big dumb button to “Enter” works nicely for adding drama when invoking a big old batch script process.

Just FYI, this is what I did. Maybe I’ll change it later, but it fit the vibe for a big dumb button on a computer keyboard perfectly.

This is the kind of low hanging fruit I’m after. Why do two Enter keys when THREE Enter keys is 50% more?!?!!

Minimize all windows and open a spreadsheet

Was legitimately thinking Win+L to lock Windows or Kubuntu.

It should launch the Hamster Dance page.

Triggers automated trap door or nerf gun by your desk.

I do still have the 3D printed flywheel assembly I made last year…

If you work from home, maybe something along the lines of: closing all work apps and opening steam (or youtube, or netflix, just what you’re doing to decompress). I just imagine a glorious end-of-day button press meaning I’M DONE, TIME FOR SOME ME TIME!

Plays Crab Rave 🦀🦀🦀

Exit to normal mode?

Launch a random retro game to the title screen.

Or any game that doesn’t have a client/launcher like steam. No clicks. Button, controller, start.

Open the system shutdown menu? Like restart, shutdown, log out, etc. Or maybe open a fullscreen browser window that navigates to your favourite white noise site, like a relaxation button.

How about Delete, since I don’t see it on the layout.

Or the Most Scroll Lock Ever.

Double F rows are always a good choice

Do you have two tiny space bars?

Yes. I’ll set up the Fn key and right Alt key to be spacebars as well, unless I’m holding them down. It ends up working well, I get extra keys, and I don’t have to deal with fiddly stabilizer assemblies for long keys. A few other keys are also shortened or split into two.

I love the style on this one.

The yellow part is actually stacked on top of an identical laser-cut plate that’s painted black. I need two for the height, but the yellow one felt more fun for this board, which is entirely unnecessary.

Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
If so, this community is for you!

Here you can discuss everything about mechanical keyboards (and only mechanical keyboards).

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Work in Progress: Handwired keyboard with a big dumb button(lemmy.world)

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