Joe Scotto's ScottoErgo Is an Impressive Open-Hardware Keyboard Build with a Robust Connector
"I ripped it off," Scotto explains of the missing micro-USB port on the keyboard's Raspberry Pi Pico controller, in favor of something else.
Mechanical keyboard enthusiast Joe Scotto is back with another design, the ScottoErgo — an impressively futuristic-looking layout that includes a robust aviation connector in place of a traditional USB port.
"It’s been nearly three months since I last released a build," Scotto writes by way of introduction to his latest design, "and this is my newest one. The board features a GX16-4 aviator connector, 10° of tenting, and 20° of angle. You might notice there is no connector on the Raspberry Pi Pico, that's because I ripped it off."
Typically, ripping a USB connector off a microcontroller board leaves you with a broken microcontroller board — but there's method in Scotto's madness. "[The Raspberry Pi Pico] has a cool feature where on the back there are 'Test Points' that you can use to manually wire a USB connection," he explains, "[and ] I did so with the aviator [connector]."
That robust GX16-4 connector, originally designed for use in the aerospace industry, gives the keyboard a satisfying connection to its host machine — and it's not the first time Scotto has turned to an unusual connector type for his keyboards. Late last year Scotto unveiled a two-part split keyboard design which used a VGA-style port for the interconnection between the two halves — because, he explained at the time, "I already had the cables."
"The other really neat thing with this board, at least in my eyes," Scotto adds of his ScottoErgo, which uses a 36-key staggered ortholinear layout, "is that the controller is covered with a piece of plexiglass."
More information on the build is available in Scotto's Reddit post, while the design has been published to GitHub — along with all his previous keyboard builds — under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license.