Keyyyyyyyys Is a Five-Switch Gripped Keyboard Powered by an ESP32 Microcontroller

Most people think of keyboards as traditional flat rectangle planks outfitted with many keys to input any letter in the alphabet. They can come in many different sizes and layouts with up to 101 keys, switch types, and even RGB LEDs. There are 75%, 60%, and even 40% boards denoting the number of keys in their respective layouts over the entire 101 switch keyboards. There are also minimalist boards, such as Ortholinear, with non-staggered keys, making for a genuinely unique typing experience. One of the most miniature boards was designed by Stavros Korokithakis, with the Keyyyyyyyyys keyboard (or gripboard), which features just five keys and is held like a joystick.

The unique keyboard was designed in conjunction with his friend Josh, who works as a programmer by day and a firefighter/paramedic at night. Josh was looking for something he could use in the field but maintain eye contact with patients and found nothing works better than pen and paper. Undeterred or Josh’s preference, Starvos went about designing a keyboard that could be held and actuated using one hand. The result is the Keyyyyyyyyys keyboard, which is built around an ESP32 microcontroller and comes equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The hardware is encased in a 3D-printed enclosure, and inputs are done via chording (simultaneous key presses or a combination of keys pressed in sequence) with a maximum of 32 states.

To get the chording correct, Korokithakis laid out the letters to correspond with their frequency in the English language, which he based on etaoin shrdlu, a nonsense phrase appearing in the days of hot type (hot metal typesetting). “I found the character frequencies in the English language and made sure that each of the five most frequently used characters (the spacebar, “e,” “t,” etc.) had its own key,” Korokithakis notes in his project blog. “After that, the next most frequent characters got a double press (the thumb plus one of the four others). Then came double presses between the other keys, then triple presses, etc."

In the end, Korokithakis found his Keyyyyyyyyys keyboard felt nice to use, and rightfully so, as it’s probably the most ergonomically designed board there is. That said, it’s also slow to type with as the chording isn’t easy to use at this point, but Korokithakis states his speed could improve as he gets used to typing with it.