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Chips & Hardware SINGLE SOURCE

Conveyor Belt GBoard Brings the Keys to You

Detailed shot of a computer circuit board showing components and golden pins.
Illustrative photo.Photo by Arturo A on Pexels

What happened

Conveyor Belt GBoard Brings the Keys to You, according to Hackaday. It must be April in October again, because Google Japan has a new, hilariously impractical reimagining of the keyboard: a conveyor belt. This time it’s on GitHub with firmware, STLs, and a full build guide if you, too, want to wait a full cycle to get the ‘backspace’ key whenever you make a typo, or to write such fun words as “ooid” or “princesship”.

You can watch it in action in the video embedded below , but just the photo probably gives you the idea: the four staggered rows of keys are each 3D-printed chains holding mechanical key switches, driven from a motor in the base. Each row also has a flexible PCB to keep everything wired together, though it’s unclear how those electrical impulses from the key presses get off the conveyor belt and into your computer. That part of the build guide is “TBD” and the source code doesn’t appear to be complete.

Sources & evidence