Comments on: Keyboard buzzer to replace console bell

By: Allie Johnson

Allie Johnson — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:14:52 +0000

Pretty cool, but that’s a lot of work for a buzzer!

By: mahto

mahto — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:17:33 +0000

Cool,glad i Icould be of some help. Sorry to hear about your keyboard :-\. When working, it is certainly a pretty impressive little device.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:15:27 +0000

I found your instructions useful for pulling my MS keyboard apart after spilling drinking chocolate over it, the two screws behind the space bar had me foxed!
Thanks for that. Unfortunately the keyboards looking terminal. The chocolate got to the circuit board, and in just 7 hours has managed to rust the connections.

What’s amazing is this keyboard has a grand total of 29 screws!

By: mahto

mahto — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:23:15 +0000

Thanks Vinicius! Interesting suggestion- I chose a hard surface because I thought it would resonate and ‘amplify’ the vibrations, but maybe that just allows it to convert the vibrations into sound waves.

By: Vinicius Mezzari

Vinicius Mezzari — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:08:01 +0000

It was a very nice hack
Here comes a little tip: try to glue your vibrator at your keyboard centre of mass and away from any fixations (such as screws). The place you chose is too rigid. If you choose a place that is easier to deform with your hand, the more vibration could be felt.
Good luck!

By: Substituindo o Beep do PC at Gambiarra!

Substituindo o Beep do PC at Gambiarra! — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:07:19 +0000

[...] Cibo Mahto decidiu colocar um pequeno motor dentro do teclado dele como substituição do beep. Para acompanhar, forneceu patches para o XTerm (emulador de terminal para Unix), para que a modificação funcione perfeitamente. Open Source é isso aí. (: [...]

By: mahto

mahto — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:37:40 +0000

Thanks Intosia! If you get it working under Windows, let me know!

By: Intosia

Intosia — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:21:06 +0000

wow very cool Although i dont use linux, il try to find a way for windows Maybe detecting the MessageboxA api and letting the scrollock blink

By: mahto

mahto — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:34:52 +0000

@Tom: Thanks!!! I’ll be expecting photos, of course .

@la23ng: That is really neat, I hadn’t thought of doing a kernel module to capture the beep events. Do you have to disable the pc speaker module when using yours? I’ll try to manufacture a plugin for your module that activates the vibrator.

By: la23ng

la23ng — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:58:56 +0000

Very nice.

I was annoyed by the PC-speaker beep too, and I replaced it with a fancy beep driver and a beep daemon that uses ALSA to play a nicer beep. The advantage of that approach is that it works irregardless of the terminal program and even on a text console.

See: http://www.carcosa.net/jason/software/beep/