HHKB Pro 2 Bluetooth

[002]

Stumbled on this one this evening. Someone has put a lot of effort into this mod by the looks of it:
http://www.kbdmania.net/xe/review/8598580

I'm sure some people here would appreciate an English translation

[scottc]

Really cool mod, thanks for linking. I also see something about a trackpoint, but Google Translate can't seem to make any sense of it. Please, someone who speaks Korean, get over here!

[matt3o]

I have a very similar config and can't get more than 8hrs battery life... admittedly I haven't played much with it but I've come to the conclusion that you need a BT4 module or a really large battery

[Muirium]

Nicely done. I like what they did with the programming port too! But I'm just as wary of the battery life as anyone who's seen these mods before.

I don't think Bluetooth is the problem, power consumption wise. It's the USB step in the middle, with all that "bitbanging" the Arduino has to do, at high speed without sleep, against the HHKB's own controller. Well, unless I'm forgetting where the controller resides again, which I'm sure I have done for something like this before!

Talking to Xwhatsit about capsense controllers in general, he reckons there's nothing inherently more power hungry about them than an Ohmic (non capsense) controller strobing a matrix full of diodes. His Model F and Beamspring controllers aren't optimised for power consumption, as like the HHKB they run on USB anyway. But he reckons a replacement wireless controller for capsense boards like the HHKB and other Topres / IBMs could have good battery life if designed around that goal from the outset.

I'm an HHKB short of being able to pursue this myself. But the SSK looks like an excellent candidate for a replacement Bluetooth native controller. I'd like to have a built in USB controller as well, as backup for running the keyboard in a Bluetooth unfriendly environment, and more importantly for programming the Bluetooth controller if it has no USB. A USB port is essential anyway for conveniently charging the battery. Hell, I'd even pop a hub in there if the keyboard shell had a nice spot for it! Wireless and wired use cases are very different.

[ماء]

i've seen it very nice pretty neat yeah

[matt3o]

if battery life is 2-3 months (like commercially available keyboards) I don't care about an on board USB port, actually I would prefer not to have it (as the usb to battery circuitry draws power)

re BT2 vs BT4, the power consumption difference (especially in stand by mode) is noticeable.

[ماء]

may bad question
what difference BT and wireless i think BT no need battery

[Muirium]

Bluetooth definitely needs battery! It's basically the built in wireless system that all phones, tablets and computers have these days. So you don't need to add an ugly dongle to use it.

@Matteo: Here's the trick with keyboards. They can choose when to sleep entirely. You simply scan the keyboard's matrix very slowly when it hasn't been used for a while, and power down the Bluetooth. Then, when any key is pressed, bump it back up to full activity again. Bluetooth hosts are smart enough to handle keyboards waking up, and keyboards are the perfect thing to send sound to sleep when not being pressed. Much easier than mice.

[matt3o]

@muirium, not sure what you mean. that is true for both bt4 and bt2. the difference is that standby in bt4 draws a fraction of bt2 (it's by specifics, nothing you can do about it)

[JBert]

Nicely done. I like what they did with the programming port too! But I'm just as wary of the battery life as anyone who's seen these mods before.

I don't think Bluetooth is the problem, power consumption wise. It's the USB step in the middle, with all that "bitbanging" the Arduino has to do, at high speed without sleep, against the HHKB's own controller. Well, unless I'm forgetting where the controller resides again, which I'm sure I have done for something like this before!

Actually, judging by the pictures this guy cut out the USB controller and replaced it with his own.

The problem is more likely to reside in the capsense controller. If that one remains active without any sleeping interval, you still have the matrix strobing at full speed, and hence full current draw. The USB/BT part can then also not sleep all the time or it might miss the signals sent by the capacitative part, which is again a loss of power.

[hasu]

I found this BT mod JP on Japanese auction site. It uses external battery and no photo of inside unfortunately.
http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/au ... 2175?al=11

[002]

Will be interesting to see the final price of that one given its interest level this early.