Netbooks were a class of tiny laptops which hit their peak over a decade ago, with the idea being that you could use the Internet and do your computing on the move with ease. Unfortunately manufacturers were scared of them eating their profits from bigger computers, and they were invariably built to a very disappointing spec. That doesn’t lessen the appeal of small form factor laptops though, and [bob-foss] is here with a simple hack to make one.

He’s taken a hinged keyboard case made for one of the previous generations of iPad Mini, and paired it with a high-end Lenovo gaming tablet by way of a 3D printed replacement for the original Apple-grabber. We said it was a simple hack and it is, but it’s no less elegant for that as the detail is what matters. This isn’t a mess-of-wires cyberdeck, instead it’s a machine you could pull out on a train and get some work done.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to take a wallow in what that netbook thing was all about, we took a look at the phenomenon back in 2020.

A surprising number of things we use in everyday life retain most of their design cues from their 19th century ancestors. The bicycle retains the same basic design as it had in 1890, as does the sewing machine, the toilet, the car, and of course, the keyboard and the QWERTY layout from old typewriters. But we aren’t doomed to have our technology perpetually living in the past. [Paul] wanted a keyboard designed around human hands, rather than being designed around a machine, so he built this unique split keyboard.

The design of this specific keyboard went through around 50 iterations before he was comfortable with it. Other design goals here were for it to be portable, and the split nature of this certainly makes it more compact as does the use of low-profile switches. Each finger’s column is angled and spaced based on the needs of that finger, with the ring finger keys sitting higher and the index finger columns angled inward. Each thumb has access to three keys, one of which is the spacebar and the other two layer keys, which is what enables this design to get down to only 36 total keys.

When thinking about it for any length of time, the modern keyboard’s design holdovers from the 1800s are fairly wasteful compared to this split, ergonomic version. Especially when looking at the spacebar, which ties up both thumbs and only performs a single task, there’s a lot of opportunity for modern designs to be more efficient, more portable, and easier on one’s body. Feel free to take this to the extreme and use all three dimensions, as long as you aren’t particularly concerned with portability.

A piano’s internal mechanism for translating a key press into sound is surprisingly complicated. It has to do a lot of things simultaneously and quickly: provide precise control over velocity, ensure the hammer doesn’t press itself against the strings,  ensure the hammer rebounds without accidentally hitting the strings, allow for quick, continued strikes of the strings, and dampen the string after the key is released. Not only is that a mouthful to say, it’s a tall order for a mechanical device and took (arguably) around 150 years for the idea to be refined into what most of us would recognize as a piano. But could [dovetail] do it with a 3D printer in a few weeks?

[dovetail]’s design relies on compliant mechanisms, which are solid parts that flex in specific and controlled ways to provide movement. The action took many iterations to make sure that all of the feelings of all the parts of a real piano action were accounted for in this model. Pianos have more than one key, though, so [dovetail] also had to design a modular system to piece all the keys together. The modularity extends to the piano’s electronics as well, with a set of PCBs daisy-chained together, each of which supports a set of keys. This is a hybrid piano, a style with a real action but digital sound production. Using infrared sensors allows the instrument to behave as a MIDI keyboard, but one with the goal of feeling somewhere between a digital piano and a fully analog one.

The piano was first demonstrated at Open Sauce, where a number of musicians were able to try it out. As a prototype device it still has a few rough edges that [dovetail] plans to improve upon, like changing the sensors from IR to hall effect, improving the action and using a different filament. There are some other things he has planned as well which we look forward to seeing in future videos. And, although a completely different instrument, it has a number of similarities to this action built to strike a bass drum instead.

Thanks to [Keith] for the tip!

After a month of daily use, the MADE68 Ultra V2 impressed me with its gaming performance and software, but its typing feel ended up being the biggest surprise.

The MelGeek MADE84 Ultra V2 packs Hall Effect switches, an 8,000Hz polling rate, heaps of RGB customization, and a wonderfully smooth typing experience into one very heavy keyboard.

I discovered that the MelGeek MADE68 Ultra V2 can turn ordinary GIFs into RGB lighting effects, so naturally I built a 30-second Tetris loop for it.