The Raspberry Pi Foundation has recently made available an official Raspberry Pi keyboard priced at just £15 and equipped with a 3x USB 2.0 type-A ports for connecting other peripherals. The keyboard measures 285 x 120 x 22mm and in the UK offers a 79 key UK layout with automatic keyboard language detection and USB type-A to micro USB type-B cable for connection. Offering compatibility with all Raspberry Pi products.
The one thing it is missing though as a Raspberry Pi mini PC. In a project published to the Pimoroni blog Sandy Macdonald reveals how this can be remedied by modifying the keyboard to insert a Raspberry Pi Zero inside.
“Our plan, as with most of these hacks, was to leave the keyboard looking as close to normal outwardly, so our idea was to wire the host micro-B port on the keyboard/hub PCB to the USB port on the Pi, and power (5V and ground) from the host micro-B port to the Pi’s GPIO to give it power. This would mean that all you would have to do would be to plug a power supply into the micro-B port on the keyboard and the Pi would be powered and be connected to the keyboard, with the minimum of messy wires outside the keyboard.”
Source: Pimoroni
