Enter Any Unicode Character Using 18 Switches on This Sleek Keyboard

Computers don’t actually understand most alphanumeric characters; all a computer really understands is binary: ones and zeroes. Everything in computer software, down to the individual alphanumeric characters, translates to a binary code. For example, the lowercase “a” character in UTF-16 encoding is 0x0041 (hexadecimal), which is 010000000001000001 in binary. Today’s pampered computer users don’t need to worry about that, because it all happens behind the scenes. But the totally 133t among you can use can use this sleek 18-switch input device to enter any Unicode character as binary.

As you can see, this input device is much more user-friendly than a standard QWERTY keyboard. Most keyboards have at least 61 keys, which is way too many and completely unnecessary. The Ultimate Unicode Input Device, on the other hand, only has the 18 switches and a single “return” key—much more manageable. To enter a character, you want to first refer to a UTF-16 Unicode chart. Most characters have a single 16-bit code in hexadecimal format, but some require multiple 16-bit units. A single-unit UTF-16 hexadecimal code can represent one of 65,536 different characters (across many languages). Simply find the character you want, convert the hexadecimal to binary, flip the switches to that binary value (up is “1”), and press enter to type that character. It couldn’t be easier!

Inside the Ultimate Unicode Input Device is a Raspberry Pi Pico development board, which has an RP2040 microcontroller capable of acting as a standard USB HID keyboard. As far as the computer is concerned, the input is coming from a regular old USB keyboard. The only other components are the 18 toggle switches and a Kailh key switch with matching key cap. The enclosure was designed to be 3D-printable in small sections that should fit on any 3D printer’s bed, with all of the supported surfaces hidden out of sight. The code is CircuitPython and is easy to flash to the Pico’s memory if you’re setup for CircuitPython. The code even supports the variant selector, which gives you access to even more characters (like emojis) by chaining together multiple binary entries. From a practical perspective, that means that you won’t ever need another keyboard as the Ultimate Unicode Input Device is future proof.