Giant QWERTY Keyboard

An educational tool for preschool and kindergarten age children to learn the alphabet, learn to read and write while playing with a computer. Video (last slide) shows giant QWERTY keyboard in action.

While corporate electronic designers were making computers smaller, I made this keyboard bigger for children to learn.

Skill required to build:

1) Basic wood working skills and basic shop tools

2) Some soldering

3) A lot of cutting with Exacto knife, sharp blades and scissors

4) Volt meter handy to check continuity and shorts

Materials:

Art board, foam core, fish aquarium filter material, 1 inch brass strips, screws, washers and nuts, surplus phone wire to connect giant keys to PC keyboard, contact cement, paint, wood, wood screws. Old computer and software.

Keyboard is older model where each key has two solder points on back of circuit board to attach/solder wire to cause short and trigger event (letter).

Sand paper letters based on Montessori method of rough/smooth, tactile senses to trace and learn alphabet

Design and assembly time took 200 hours. Conservative estimate.

Pencil CAD

Painted version used for trade show booth.

Original PC used was Kaypro II with 64k of RAM and dual 5 1/4 inch floppies. Shareware named "the animated alphabet" was used on a 386 PC for the video.