Joe Scotto's Latest Keyboard, the 3D-Printed "ScottoHazard," Is His "First 'Real' Split" Design
Using a pair of Raspberry Pi RP2040 chips in an Arduino Pro Micro-compatible pinout, the ScottoHazard is compact yet eye-catching.
Open-hardware keyboard designer Joe Scotto is back with another creation, the eye-catching ScottoHazard — a split minimalist ortholinear layout that uses two RP2040 Pro Micro boards.
"The ScottoHazard is a 4×5 (40-keys) or 4×6 (48-keys) split ortholinear keyboard that uses a TRRS [Tip-Ring-Ring-Sleeve] cable for the interconnect," Scotto explains of his latest keyboard. "The ScottoHazard uses Akko Penguin Silent tactile switches which I'm very impressed with, they feel similar to my favorite switch, the Akko Lavender Purple. The keycaps are my own design and printed on my Bambu Lab A1 in Bambu Matte Yellow and Galaxy Nebula filament."
This isn't Scotto's first keyboard project. Previous designs have included the ultra-thin ScottoWing, a one-handed input device inspired by the Frogpad, the unusual-layout ScottoKatana, and the ScottoDeck — the latter designed as an Elgato Stream Deck alternative and boasting eight programmable keys and two input knobs — alongside a battery-powered Bluetooth-connected wireless keyboard dubbed the Scotto63, for the number of keys in its butterfly-style split ortholinear layout.
It's also not Scotto's first split keyboard, though the maker discounts the earlier effort as a cheat that uses a single microcontroller wired to the switch-only second half through a repurposed VGA cable. "[This is] my first 'real' split keyboard," Scotto explains, "as it uses two separate controllers unlike my first split."
Those microcontrollers are Raspberry Pi RP2040s, in the form of a custom development board dubbed the RP2040 Pro Micro — designed to adapt the RP2040 microcontroller to the footprint and pinout of an Arduino Pro Micro board. The electronics are housed in the keyboard's 3D printed casing — and, as with all of Scotto's designs, there's no PCB with the mechanical keyboard switches wired by hand instead.
Full details are available on Scotto's website; design files and firmware have been published to GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license.