How to Put a Raspberry Pi Inside the Official Raspberry Pi Keyboard

In the early days of home computing, it was quite common to see “all-in-one” computers that were built into the keyboard. Popular models included the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and BBC Micro. But that trend largely died out in the ’90s with the growing popularity of laptops and modular desktop systems. It is, however, a cool idea, and now you can replicate it by putting a Raspberry Pi inside of the official Raspberry Pi Keyboard.

We found two different guides on how to accomplish that:

• Pimoroni’s Raspberry Pi Model 3 A+ Build

• Howchoo’s Raspberry Pi Zero W Build

Both of these projects take advantage of the new Raspberry Pi Keyboard, which was just announced a couple of weeks ago alongside a new mouse. Both the keyboard and mouse are fairly standard, but they do have the beautiful white/red color scheme to match the official Raspberry Pi Case. More importantly, the keyboard has just enough room to fit an actual Raspberry Pi inside so you can build your own retro-style all-in-one computer.

The build process for both projects is fairly similar, and requires a bit of trimming inside the keyboard’s plastic case. If you follow Pimoroni’s tutorial and use the Raspberry Pi Model 3 A+ you’ll get more power, but following Howchoo’s write-up with the Zero W will leave you with enough extra room to include a small LiPo battery and an Adafruit Powerboost 1000C to power the computer.

The other major difference between the two builds is how the keyboard is connected to the Raspberry Pi. In Pimoroni’s guide , the USB connection is wired internally and results in a very clean, cable-free look once the keyboard is reassembled. Howchoo’s will have you run a short USB cable outside the keyboard, forming a small loop. That’s not as clean looking, but it does mean you can use the keyboard with another external Raspberry Pi if you want to.