Keyboard in action (via Robofun Create)
The practical and impractical uses of the Raspberry Pi knows no bounds. The Robofun-Create team has created a keyboard that instead of emitting the classic ‘clacking’ sound of computer keys, it makes the sound of snapping open a cold brew. This is because the entire keyboard is made up of beer cans. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of you actually having the option to buy one, it was simply a demonstration at the 2012 Webstock Conference in Bucharest, Romania as a project sponsored by Prague-based brewing company Staropramen.
Robofun placed capacitive controls under each key, errr- beer. The 44 cans represent the letters and functions of a regular QWERTY keyboard and are label above. When pressing a key, a signal from the capacitive controls is processed using and Arduino board to get the desired output. From there, the signal is sent to a plasma display using the Raspberry Pi as an interface. The entire contraption could be used as a regular plug and play keyboard on any computer, if there is any keyboard leftover.
Visitors to Webstock 2012 used the beer keyboard to input their emails and enter a Staropramen contest. In my opinion a more entertaining contests would have resulted from taking off the labels and having the contestant enter their email after having drank some of the “keys."
Robofun is the largest open0source store in Romania. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by.
Eavesdropper
