An USB Interface for BlackBerry's Q10 keyboard and BlackBerry's trackball
BlackBerry devices has (IMHO) the best-in-class hardware keyboard. Also the trackball it's a nice replacement for a mouse in a portable device. I found a board created by @arturo192 which exposes a BB Q10 Keyboard over an I2C protocol. I decided to create this small project in order to use this keyboard, and a trackball, but over USB.
Creating an USB interface is a step I have to in order to interface this keyboard with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which will be the main board of my Palmtop device. Eventhought the Pi Zero W has an I2C port, I will use of the available ports for a hi resolution display.
This application is not just a replacement of the I2C interface of the BB Q10 PMOD because introduce some features that are not available in the standard BlackBerry's Keyboard interface, for example:
- Controlling the backlight brightness
- Emulating keyboard arrows
- Adding cut, copy and paste shortcuts.
Among other features that I will be implementing during the development of this project.
The reference board used in this project is the Adafruit Trinket M0 which uses an ATSAMD21E18 32-bit Cortex M0+ CPU.
| Keyboard PMOD | Trinket M0 |
|---|---|
| 3V3 | 3V3 |
| GND | GND |
| SDA | SDA |
| SCL | SCL |
| INT | A0 |
- Controlling the backlight brightness
- Function keys (F1 to F9 and F12)
- Act as Apple Keyboard
- Emulating keyboard arrows
- Undu, cut, copy and paste.
- [_] Handle keys repeat
- [_] Complete Documentation
The following combination of keys will increase or decrease the brightness of the backlight keyboard. The brightness goes from 0 to 100% in 20% steps.
Press and hold Shift then Sym
-
Press and release A to decrease the brightness
-
Press and release Q to increase the brightness
Function keys are very useful, from asking for help (F1) to closing a windows (Alt + F4), but also when booting a computer in order to access BIOS / EFI, or boot disk menu (F2, F9, F12...).
The mapping that I have deviced for this keyboard implemented only F1 to F9 and F12. All this function keys can be press by:
Press and hold Shift then Sym
-
Press and release 1 to 9 for F1 to F9 (keys: w, e, r, s, d, f, z, x, c)
-
Press and release 0 for F12 (the mic Key)
Setting _act_as_apple_keyboard to True replaces Control Key with Command Key for cut, copy and paste actions. This feature should be translated to a hardware configuration (pin in low or high state).
As the BlackBerry Q10 keyboard does not have built-in arrows key, the emulation of these keys is done by using the Sym key plus a (left), s (down), d (right), w (up). This four keys are widely used in video games.
This combination of keys supports repeat. So holding down Sym plus any of the arrow keys, while result in a repetition of the key pressed.
Undo, cut, copy and paste is implemented by holding the Sym key and pressing:
- z for Undo
- x for Cut
- c for Copy
- v for Paste