Displays built-into PC keyboards are increasingly popular, but what about using your addressable RGB keyboard as a display? Of course one keyboard would be far too blocky for any practical use, so the guys at SignalRGB built a video wall using 40 WhirlwindFX Element v2 (opens in new tab) ARGB keyboards. The resulting 5 x 8 ARGB keyboard array looks really cool, but is probably still ‘too pixilated’ for the appreciation of most people.
In the video you can see the preparation, design and execution of this eccentric 40 keyboards as a video wall project. To start with, 40 identical full sized aRGB keyboards were collected together. Then, the keyboards were all simultaneously connected to a PC using a handful of USB hubs and lots of wires. Physically mounting all 40 keyboards was completed in a low tech manner by resting each device between four nails on a black sheet coated wall. If you worry about the processing overhead from all these USB devices being controlled simultaneously, the setup was shown to use less than 2% CPU time.
The magic that brought this 5 x 8 keyboard array to life, and coaxed them into working in harmony as a single large display, was the SignalRGB software. In the video we see the user creating a grid layout with the keyboards, and assigning the correct device to the correct position in the grid. We calculate that the 40 keyboards worked together as an 95 x 48 pixel (approximately 4,500 pixels) display. The software configuration process apparently took about half an hour.
With everything set up in the software, it was time for demos. The keyboard array looked great in use for ambient effects with pixel waves and explosions etc. Music videos varied in how well they translated to the 95 x 48 pixel screen. Those with heavy use of strong contrasting imagery worked best. Watching webcam feeds and animations on the ARGB keyboard wall didn’t seem to be very worthwhile.
For gaming tests a wide variety of games were tested; Crysis, Doom, Mario, Minecraft, Pong worked with various degrees of success. Yes – basic games with block graphics seemed to work the best, so Pong was the best of those listed. However, using the display wall as a touchscreen in the Fruit Ninja game, where you press the keys / screen to slice the fruit, looked pretty fun.
SignalRGB admits Logitech was probably the first to build a giant keyboard-hewn screen at a PAX event several years ago. But this is the first to be fully addressable and customizable, accessible to any user of the SignalRGB software. Moreover, Logitech’s wall only replayed a single pre-programmed animation, whereas SignalRGB can broadcast anything from the PC to the keyboard wall in real-time.
For improvements to the demonstration, we think – as well as adding many more keyboards - keyboards with denser layouts and brighter RGBs would probably advance the appeal of the aRGB keyboard video wall significantly. Whatever the case, a video wall constructed from keyboards isn’t going to make it into our Best Computer Monitors list anytime soon.
