The Word Tile Keyboard

This post is an archival post from www.Datamancer.net, which is no longer available. It was originally written by Richard Nagy many years ago when he did the project, before he passed away. We have decided to keep it public along with some selected other projects in order to make the information available to as many people as possible.

And now for something completely different…. a Scrabble keyboard! This keyboard was commissioned by a couple of friends of mine from back east (NJ) who are avid Scrabble players. Most of the keys are made from real Scrabble tiles that were all hand-beveled (truly an exercise in patience/masochism!) and built onto a USB, clicky, mechanical-switch keyboard. This keyboard was going into a Mac environment so I decided to use brushed aluminum for the casing and round all of the corners to keep with the sleek, simple Macintosh styling.

Near the end of the build, I decided that the keyboard looked a little too minimalist so I added some silver hardware and a seam to put a slightly industrialized twist on the design. The Num, Caps, and Scroll Lock LEDs shine through tiles with the lettering cut out.