Makers Jack and Steph, of Jack and Steph’s Workshop, have launched a equipment for creating your personal 40% mechanical keyboard with a distinction: an built-in Raspberry Pi Pico W offers a direct line to OpenAI’s ChatGPT massive language mannequin (LLM) for two-way conversations.
“This keyboard began as a mission for the 2023 Halloween Hackfest, the place it gained third prize(!) within the type of the Haunted Keyboard,” the makers clarify. “In that iteration, the ChatGPT integration was a spooky entity that responded to all typing with cryptic predictions and observations. This Tindie iteration of the keyboard re-imagines the ChatGPT integration as a useful assistant, however you possibly can program it to be something that you really want it to be.”
The compact keyboard is pushed by a Raspberry Pi Pico W, a low-cost microcontroller board which features a Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core microcontroller and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. A customized CircuitPython firmware listens out for key presses and turns them into typed letters, like some other keyboard controller, full with assist for a number of layers to make up for the small variety of keys — however that is solely half its job.
On startup, the keyboard connects to OpenAI’s ChatGPT — a conversational synthetic intelligence (AI) primarily based on massive language mannequin (LLM) expertise, designed to reply to text-based prompts with its personal writing. Something typed on the keyboard is distributed to each the native pc and ChatGPT concurrently, and ChatGPT’s response is then printed out over the keyboard’s USB connection in flip.
The keyboard equipment features a PCB and plate, however you will must carry the remainder of the elements your self. (📷: Jack and Steph’s Workshop)
The barebones keyboard equipment, which features a PCB and plate, is obtainable on Jack and Steph’s Tindie retailer now at $50, or $60 together with a Raspberry Pi Pico W; patrons might want to present their very own Cherry MX-compatible keyswitches and keycaps, stabilizers, a USB cable, and case.
The supply code for the unique spooky variant is printed to GitHub beneath the permissive MIT license; it features a shortcut to disable the ChatGPT integration by urgent Esc thrice.