Github link: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry

Here's a video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDb8_ld9gOQ

I've been using it for almost two years now, and I'm not going back.

It's based on a spare Blackberry Q10 keyboard and a custom Arduino-compatible board that reads the keyboard matrix and outputs it as USB HID to the phone. From the viewpoint of the phone, it's just a regular USB keyboard, so no special software is needed.

But I do use a custom virtual keyboard to have just two rows of symbols that are not natively on the keyboard, as I didn't want to add another layer of rarely used symbols that I'd have to memorize.

(On the image you can see Ubuntu with XFCE4 running on it. I chose Ubuntu because it's what was easiest to get running in a chroot jail on the phone. I'm using VNC to display the GUI. I even managed to get FEX (x86/x64 emulator) and Wine running, so it runs x86/x64 Linux and Windows apps.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Funnily, yes it is. At least in theory, I haven't tested it.

I am not using the USB connector directly, but instead I have a small USB OTG breakout board in between, which has USB C on one side and USB 2.0 OTG on the other side.

The same kind of board exists for Micro USB (which I tested on my last phone) and Lightning.

So all you need to do is swap the connector and that's that. And of course adjust the case design files to fit an iPhone.