Laptop-profile keyboard with documented connector/protocol?
Howard Jones wrote 10/08/2015 at 13:58 • 3 pointsI'm looking around for a laptop keyboard assembly to use in a project, but I want one that (a) is documented or reverse-engineered already and (b) doesn't use some horrible anti-diy connector. My ideal would be a Lenovo T series, but that one I can find people specifically saying it's hard to use. Any ideas? Back in the day, people like RS stocked whole keyboards, but they don't seem to anymore...
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(and yes, it's for an FPGA-terminal project)
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OK, then I will grab a dell spare from ebay! :-) I got the impression they were more "intelligent" than just the matrix connectors, but thinking a little more, the only logical use for all those pins would be the bare matrix. Thanks for the sanity check!
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"Intelligence" is in the controller chip only (example list of features- http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ENE-KB910Q-LPC-interface-keyboard-controller_448516063.html), otherwise replacement keyboard would be much more expensive ;)
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I guess you are planning to repurpose keyboard matrix from a laptop.
Most vendors use a ZIF connector line this one (picture is the first result from google search):
AFAIK only Thinkpads use "much less DIY-frienly" one.
As for documentation I'm afraid there isn't any, maybe except for Thinkpad T-series (there was an article on HaD about USB adapter for a T60 keyboard and trackpoint). I can recommend searching on https://geekhack.org/ and http://deskthority.net/- both sites cover mostly mechanical standalone keyboards but there is a load of general information (and source code)
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I thought that all laptop keyboards are USB nowadays, with some old ones being still ps2 -- both protocols pretty well documented?
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