BUBBY, the Handheld Chording Keyboard
Mikey Sklar's BUBBY uses seven button inputs for one-handed typing.
Today most accept the QWERTY keyboard as the standard computer interface. However, there is a small – but dedicated – faction of computer enthusiasts and hackers that think this situation needs to be improved… or at least considered an interesting project! Included in the ranks of keyboard hackers is Mikey Sklar, who built BUBBY, a seven-button chording keyboard.
Chording keyboards use combinations of buttons to represent letters and characters, allowing them to get by with many fewer keys than the standard-layout device on which I’m currently typing. With its reduced keyswitch/button layout, BUBBY is held and operated in one hand. It plugs into a computer as an HID keyboard, or it can be used to take notes on the go via a battery and a small IPS TFT display for immediate feedback.
The heart of the device is an Adafruit ESP32-S3 TFT Feather running CircuitPython, which provides processing, battery management and the display. The seven input buttons, along with a power switch, are wired into the Feather via a custom-machined PCB. A 3D-printed housing finishes off the design.
Sklar actually made five chording keyboards in a quest for his new interface, though the basic layout of his first protoboard design is what he eventually went with. The build process is outlined on BUBBY’s GitHub repo. Files are included if you want to examine it in more detail or even create your own!