Slowly but surely I’m making progress on my personal project. Creating a wearable keyboard that can be used while walking has been a dream of mine for a couple of years. One of the decision I made upfront is that I makes no sense to rush this project.

The main reason is that most of the stuff I create these days either have to be brought to market as soon as possible (by yesterday please!). The other reason is that cutting corners for such a unique problem I try to solve results into missing certain details or solutions that might not be obvious at first sight. Even though I’m not sure if this is going to be a product, I do try to learn on how to design for manufacturing. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Dato as sparring partners. There’s just soo much to learn when developing something from scratch with no previous examples or solutions available…

Anyhow, it’s progressing quite well and I’m almost at a stage at which the hardware is finished! For example, the PCB’s are looking alright (and I even found some space for my favorite poem:

I’ve switched to flat cable connectors for connecting the pcb of the keys to the main board, as well as redesigning the enclosure (not pictured) to fit the top key with a socket so that one can be swapped as well! The band is also placed more comfortable and attached in a different (but more solid way).

The assembly is also better as you can now put all the parts in the right order into one side and close it off. I still need to find a way to mount the battery in a safe and solid way.

And here’s the left hand fully assembled: