ScottoErgo is an ergonomic keyboard powered by Raspberry Pi Pico. It’s staggered and tilted to increase comfort and reduce repetitive strain, and it makes excellent clacking sounds when you hit the keys.
How it’s made
- Raspberry Pi Pico
- 36 blank keycaps, each with a separate switch and diode behind it
- 0.06″ Plexiglass to protect the otherwise-exposed Pico
The body of the keyboard is 3D printed on an Ender-3 Pro, and uses almost an entire roll of filament getting the design absolutely perfect. These are the pretty purple tactile switches behind the blank keycaps that give the keys their lovely “clickity-clack” sound when you hit them. They are available in tons of colours and would look great inside a transparent keyboard. Hey Joe, make us a transparent one next!
“Hand-wired” means exactly what you think — Joe wired every single one of the 36 keys individually to the Raspberry Pi Pico. He also removed the Pico’s USB connector, located the test points on the back of the board (used during manufacturing to test the boards), and manually wired an aviation connector adaptor to them.
No stupid questions here
In this handy two-minute video, Joe explains how he gets the functionality of a full QWERTY keyboard with many fewer keys. So if you’re wondering how the ScottoErgo keyboard works, give the video below a watch to learn more about this simple, and sometimes more efficient, alternative keyboard layout.
Keyboard treasure trove
Joe Scotto is something of a handwired keyboard nerd. ScottErgo is just the latest in a long line of builds that he showcases on his YouTube channel. All of them boast chunky tactile keys and pleasingly vintage-looking colour combinations. Every build ends up on Joe’s GitHub, so you can recreate them for free; there are currently 17 designs for you to choose from.
