Now You Can Use a Blackberry Keyboard With Your PC

There’s nary denying that BlackBerry dropped the shot and squandered a tremendous pb successful the smartphone abstraction erstwhile the iPhone arrived. But there’s besides nary denying that earlier that, BlackBerry made coagulated phones, and each but perfected carnal smartphone keyboards. If you were a BB devotee, and are inactive amended astatine typing with your thumbs than each of your fingers, you tin present get a BlackBerry keyboard for your PC (or adjacent phone, if you privation to bring things afloat circle).

If you’re aged capable to retrieve the pre-iPhone days, erstwhile smartphones weren’t conscionable elephantine touchscreens, BlackBerry’s phones were everywhere, and could beryllium recovered successful the pockets of everyone from firm execs to precocious schoolhouse students whose parents were firm execs. (If you don’t cognize wherefore the BlackBerry was truthful important, oregon wherefore the company’s communicative is truthful tragic, an upcoming movie mightiness assistance shed immoderate airy connected that.) Before an full manufacture of accessories blossomed astir the iPhone, determination was an full enactment manufacture dedicated to the BlackBerry, and years aft the company’s past smartphone was released, determination are tons of BlackBerry parts inactive sitting successful warehouses.

Why not instrumentality vantage of those other parts? The folks astatine Solder Party successful Sweden managed to get their hands connected a large stack of keyboards from the BlackBerry Q20—one of the sleekest handsets the institution ever released. They past paired each committee with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 to let it to observe and construe cardinal presses, and past enactment each the components successful a customized injection molded wide integrative lawsuit to support everything neat, tidy, and useable.

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The BB Q20 Keyboard With Trackpad is simply a large commencement if you’re readying to physique yourself a handheld cyberdeck, and includes casual entree to each of the pin connections you’ll request to interface with it. But Solder Party besides gave the BB Q20 a modular USB-C larboard and autochthonal USB HID (human interface device) support, which means you tin plug it into a Mac, Windows, oregon Linux PC, oregon adjacent Apple and Android mobile devices, and usage it arsenic a modular QWERTY keyboard.

The BB Q20's tiny touchpad volition adjacent enactment similar a modular machine mouse, implicit with near and close rodent fastener clicks, and sliding your digit crossed the pad portion holding the ALT cardinal volition marque it relation similar cursor keys.

You tin drawback the compact keyboard, afloat assembled, from Solder Party’s Tindie store for $30.

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