14 DAY TRIAL // Mechanical keyboards are cool for a wide variety of reasons, and one of them is the sound that they generate when pressing the keys.
And yet, this still isn’t enough for some people who just love the retro feeling of using a typewriter, and what better way to bring this back other than hacking your keyboard to sound like a typewriter?
This is what someone managed to do recently with an Arduino board and solenoids that are used to reproduce the typewriter sound.
The system is actually quite simple and anyone should be able to build the same thing using the instructions shared by the developer himself.
You can do it too
First and foremost, there’s the Python code that reads that you type on the keyboard and then sends the data to an Arduino board using a serial connection. The Arduino itself is connected to the PC with an USB cable, and using a piece of code reads the serial data and then transmits it to the solenoids which react accordingly.
The result can be seen and listened to in the videos embedded in this article as well, and while everything is pretty cool, I’m pretty sure your neighbors would think otherwise.
The Arduino and the Python codes are available on GitHub here.
“I just wanted to feel the typing on typewriter. So this is the keyboard which will give feeling of typing on typewriter,” the developer explains in a brief overview of his project.
Living aside the loud noise generated by the keyboard/typewriter, this project is once again living proof that the Arduino comes with unlimited possibilities that you can easily unleash with the right piece of code. And for what it’s worth, bringing such ideas to life doesn’t cost a fortune either, as the Arduino can be yours for some $20.
