Overly ambitious project - Solenoid on a Keyboard

Wendell, thank you, I think this idea I have to credit/blame you for :slight_smile:

I watched the video recently on The Model F Keyboard in 2025, if you’re somehow here and haven’t seen it, please watch it, great video that educates on what a Solenoid does/did for early keyboards.

Assuming you’ve seen that or are already aware, then you’re aware why I’d want to do that, so let me describe what I have in mind and what I’m purchased so far.

Goal
A mechanical keyboard that when keys are pressed a solenoid goes off and returns, and I am keen on this being a hardware solution, not a software one, but go ahead and try to change my mind if you like. You’ll just have to convince me that I won’t notice the delay, there won’t be a delay from when the key is pressed (that is larger than a hardware solution).

The easy way is to go buy something like an ‘MM Studio Class80’, or a few others, but what’s not easy is the price, and for a fun toy that I may only use a handful of times, would rather spend my time than my money… At this stage.

Need help to find
Keyboard with USB-passthrough - I have a Corsair K70 LUX with brown switches and it has ‘the’ type of USB-passthrough I’m looking for. It has a single cable exiting the shell but its really 2 in 1 cord. 1 powers the keyboard and 1 is mounted to a USB type A port on the back of the shell.

How about the Red Dragon YAMA K550? I could just use my Corsair too, as it won’t need to be in service much longer. Anyone have any TKL suggestions similar to these two, would like to hear them.

Now this is very important for what I have in mind, as more modern pass throughs that I’m finding, are USB-C hubs where you have 1, USB C to A cable and on the keyboard are 1 or 2 USB A ports. This won’t work because they’re all being powered by the same USB-A port on the computer, so the solenoid will draw too much current and/or voltage, I predict.

I was keen on the

Controller for the Solenoid
I found a schematic from 6.5 years ago on imgur called “Installing a solenoid into a KBDFans 8x”, which talks about and shows a diagram, they linked me to a 12 y/o guide by martyncurrey called “Controlling a Solenoid Valve from an Arduino”.

So potentially following this guide, but instead of a 12 barrel it can end up going to my USB-A connector via my switch?

What I have
2 x 5V Small Solenoid (SKU CE09448). Has a JST 2-pin male
1 x JST 2-pin Extension Cable with On/Off Switch (ADA3064). one end is male the other is female.
2 x USB-A to JST 2-pin female. Called a vgol B0C462ZD4R on Amazon.

Let me know what you think, this isn’t a very clear project yet, just have some parts and an idea.

The easiest way to get a keyboard with a solenoid would be to just buy one of the Model F replicas with a solenoid. There’s everything between a 60% model to a 120% model, the cases already have the spare room to fit the solenoid, and the keyboard controllers have pins you can just plug the solenoid into.

To DIY this sort of thing you’d need to find a keyboard whose case has enough room to spare to fit the extra hardware (not going to be easy, modern keyboards are much more compact) and custom-make a controller, configure and compile a Vial for that controller, and do a lot of soldering.

A USB-port will supply more than enough power, the Model F replicas only need a regular USB port and their solenoids are larger than the ones IBM used.

Hi thank you, I’ll consider that, can you link any here please? Extraordinarily hard to find on Google? TKL/80 and black would be ideal, mechanical and hot swappable would be nice, but if it has blue or brown cherry mx switches that’ll probably do

The Model F is mechanical, but it doesn’t use discrete switches like a modern mechanical keyboard. If you like clicky switches like the MX Blue, I’m sure you’ll love IBM’s buckling spring switch (which is what these keyboards use), it’s really on a whole other level.

The shop is at https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/ , for a black TKL I’d recommend the same model Wendell got, the FSSK. Another alternative is the F77, but this one does lack the function row (right ctrl is by default a Fn key, but you can also buy it in HHKB style, which means the right shift is split into a Shift and a dedicated Fn key).

The key caps are hot swappable, but the switches themselves aren’t. You can add or remove switches, but it requires you to open the keyboard up. You can easily program layout changes if you switch key caps around using the software Vial (which doesn’t need to be installed, it’s available as a website and usable over the internet, configuration is saved directly into the keyboard).

Look that’s a great option, but the cost of it is still large.

For now I’ve dipped my toe in by buying a ‘ECHOME Mini Alice’ which claims to have a solenoid. I have some extra mx blues lying around so that and some key caps (round ones) has set me back $120, and that may do it for me. by keycap set, it was a whole full size keyboard that happened to have the keycaps I wanted, was only $10 USD more to get a whole keyboard with a full set of blue switches than just the keycaps so figured that would make sense.

Maybe I can study how the Echome mini alice wires up the solenoid and learn how to adapt it to other keyboards.

I strongly doubt your ECHOME Mini Alice actually has a solenoid, there’s no obvious room in the case for it. There might be a spot on the PCB to solder a solenoid controller to, but then you’ll have to fit another PCB and the solenoid itself to the outside of the case, or make a new case.
I won’t tell you you can’t DIY this, in a worst case scenario you could add a solenoid to any keyboard by connecting the keyboard to an Arduino which simply repeats the scancodes to a computer and controls the solenoid with its GPIO. But DIY is going to be a lot of extra work when a plug-and-play solution for an exceptionally good keyboard already exists.