Raspberry Pi Release Japanese Keyboard Variant
Custom keyboard for Japanese Pi Users
The Japanese keyboard is the latest layout available. Last month we saw the release of Swedish, Portuguese, Danish and Norwegian layouts of the official keyboard. All of the keyboards come with three USB 2.0 type-A ports, adding much needed extra ports to your Raspberry Pi. Available in two color choices, red and white or black and grey, this new keyboard has been designed to work with all three Japanese character sets.
The Japanese keyboard is the latest layout available. Last month we saw the release of Swedish, Portugese, Danish and Norwegian layouts of the official keyboard. All of the keyboards come with three USB 2.0 type-A ports, adding much needed extra ports to your Raspberry Pi. Available in two color choices, red and white or black and grey, this new keyboard has been designed to work with all three Japanese alphabets.
Simon Martin, Senior Principal Engineer at Raspberry Pi Trading explains some of the challenges they faced “We ended up reverse-engineering generic Japanese keyboards to see how they work, and mapping the keycodes to key matrix locations. We are fortunate that we have a very patient keyboard IC vendor, called Holtek, which produces the custom firmware for the controller.”
The Japanese and other keyboards are available from Pimoroni and The Pi Hut who offer international shipping and via Japanese reseller SwitchScience.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".