Show us your weird input and weird peripherals!

Just as Jedi teens need to create their own light saber, this is a way for a true geek to create their own computer interface. Nothing makes a personal computer more personal than a custom keyboard, a bespoke mouse, an almighty macropad, a snug jug wheel, or a fancy flight yoke.

In this contest, we encourage you to create your weird, fancy, flashyest, or most custom computer peripherals and share that work with everyone else. Wired or wireless, weird or wonderful, we want to see it. And Digi-Key is sponsoring this competition for three winners to make an online purchase at their warehouse for 150 each! More parts, more projects.

It’s yours

Anyone can just buy a keyboard, but if you want a custom ergonomic keyboard that fits right in with your own hands, you’ll probably need to create one. With Your own two hands. And if you’re a carved brass mouse, well, you have some carved – Logitech won’t make one for you. Maybe you just type in binary, or maybe you need a keyboard for some alien languages ​​that has 450 individual characters. Or perhaps the smallest keyboard? You got this.

But why stop with the “normal” peripherals? We’ve seen a number of devices lately that blur the lines between macro pads and multi-axis joysticks – both in sensual organic form and in brutal no-nonsense rectangles. And [scottbez1]Its searches, including the Haptic Smart-Knob with a screen, are nothing short of inspiring. It doesn’t have to be an existing device to be great.

And is this even a peripheral? It is a USB man-in-the-middle device that turns satirical capitalization on or off, those of you who are always very sarcastic, but at the same time too lazy to type like this.

Special section

As always, we have a few special sections to enable your fancy flights that can serve as jumping off points. Whether your project fits into one of these niches or not, you deserve a prize money, but in the end we will highlight some of our favorite entries in Hackade.

• Strange topography: Tired of the normal old keyboard? Is a split, layered, hang-row, orthogonal layout more than your style? Prefer to type in a sphere or bowl? We want to see your crazy keyboard topography.
• Making a good mouse trap: Domestic computers are a major target for peripheral personalization of rats. DIY rats, trackballs, touchpads or anything else that can move a cursor around are fair play here.
• Press any key: Sometimes you need a few more buttons to press or a knob to rotate Maybe it’s a special function for controlling your video conferencing rig or just a friendly volume. Here’s a section for these single-purpose assistants that really make your desk yours.
• Cyborg: If you have a wearable computer, you must have noticed a lack of wearable input methods. What have you done about it? Popular options are voice control, gesture detection gloves or one-handed cording keyboard. See you!
• Virtual reality: Let’s be honest. The usual ways to interact with VR or AR situations are a bit lazy, and playing a driving game on a keyboard doesn’t cut the mustard. A full-on cockpit for your flight simulator or a physical sword for your virtual sword fight makes all the difference. Show us the peripherals that immerse you in the virtual or game world.

You got six weeks

Many of you are already worried about this; All you have to do is register on Hackaday.io and enter the contest. The rest of you, hopefully this is the inspiration you need. Start small with a scroll wheel, or go everywhere and discover your own category device. Time to interact with your computer Yours.

Thanks again to DG-Key for sponsoring the award.