Working towards a handheld computer with a physical keyboard. Lots of examples out there (Hackberry Pi, Beepy, etc) but wanted to try my hand at it.

Along the way I found most of these use salvaged BlackBerry keyboards which are only going to become harder to find, so also on a bit of a side quest to build a thumb-sized keyboard from scratch. Got me into laying out and prototyping my first PCBs and learning about how these things are made - lots of fun so far!

Something cool I learned from tearing apart a BB keyboard: the satisfying “click” is just a tiny metal dome that pops and completes the circuit when pressed. Not news to anyone familiar with electronics manufacturing, but it was a cool thing to “discover.”