Wireless Mod

[PcBeExpensive]

How hard  is making a wired keyboard wireless? Also how much would it cost?

[NF-A12x25]

Very difficult to do it and make it look good. And the parts and equipment will make it cost-prohibitive. You’ll need a decent soldering station, which should cost at least a hundred bucks and a really nice hand soldering station for electronics runs between $200-1000 but you don’t need one that expensive, and you’ll need to design your own printed circuit board with a microcontroller and QMK/VIA firmware that’ll take your keys’ raw input and send them to the computer over bluetooth. And you’ll need to somehow fit that in the case with a battery.

 

So very hard AND it’ll cost more than getting a good wireless board.

[PcBeExpensive]

49 minutes ago, NF-A12x25 said:

Very difficult to do it and make it look good. And the parts and equipment will make it cost-prohibitive. You’ll need a decent soldering station, which should cost at least a hundred bucks and a really nice hand soldering station for electronics runs between $200-1000 but you don’t need one that expensive, and you’ll need to design your own printed circuit board with a microcontroller and QMK/VIA firmware that’ll take your keys’ raw input and send them to the computer over bluetooth. And you’ll need to somehow fit that in the case with a battery.

 

So very hard AND it’ll cost more than getting a good wireless board.

oh wow. Thanks for the info.

[Bismut]

1 hour ago, NF-A12x25 said:

Very difficult to do it and make it look good. And the parts and equipment will make it cost-prohibitive. You’ll need a decent soldering station, which should cost at least a hundred bucks and a really nice hand soldering station for electronics runs between $200-1000 but you don’t need one that expensive, and you’ll need to design your own printed circuit board with a microcontroller and QMK/VIA firmware that’ll take your keys’ raw input and send them to the computer over bluetooth. And you’ll need to somehow fit that in the case with a battery.

 

So very hard AND it’ll cost more than getting a good wireless board.

I feel like one should be able to hack another wireless board and get its guts to power whichever one you want, but it'll require some serious reverse engineering, soldering and general hackery. Unlikely to work if you aren't pretty familiar with that sort of thing already.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Bismut
I accidentally posted the post too early because I hit some key combination.

[NF-A12x25]

7 hours ago, Bismut said:

I feel like one should be able to hack another wireless board and get its guts to power whichever one you want, but it'll require some serious reverse engineering, soldering and general hackery. Unlikely to work if you aren't pretty familiar with that sort of thing already.

It would need to have the exact same grid formation on the PCB for that to work without substantial PCB-level mods, but it is theoretically possible if a wireless board has a similar PCB to a non-wireless one.