Where to Shove My Keyboard.... And Mouse?

Where indeed to put the keyboard when you build a pit???

I decided to put it right above the F-16 hood. I have a keyboard arm for it installed on the left hand side of the pit on a 19" rack, but ended up not using it because it's too flimsy, and it's quite difficult to type anything longer than 2 characters when the keyboard and the screen are 90 degree from each other. So, it's now used to store the Quest Pro and charger.

There are two problems with putting it on top of the hood.

  1. It's a bit far, if I am not careful, I would bump my chin on the ICP, and
  2. It's 2 1/2" below the top edge of the "hood" making it a bit difficult to type.
So, to solve the problem, I need a keyboard riser to boost it up to at least even with the hood. This solves the long term storage problem of the full sized keyboard and it's at least not too difficult to use. But it still doesn't solve the problem of being too far from an inclined seat during a flight. The best place for keyboard in flight, IMHO, would be where the HUD lens sits, i.e. right above and in front of the ICP, where I don't have a HUD glass which is completely irrelevant in VR, ... nor in a 2D flight sim.

So, I designed and printed a "plug" adapter to plug into the empty space above the HUD lens, and the tilted the top surface to about horizontal (it was 10 degree down). Trust me, you don't want your keyboard to incline in that "wrong" direction. It's just difficult to type, particularly for a touch typist.

Then, there was this problem of the top surface not wide enough. Sure the keyboard will sit on it just fine, but "punching" a bit hard on some keys might just tip it over. So I put in two threaded rods/nuts to lock down the keyboard. The "knobs" have 1/4" stainless steel nuts embedded in them during printing.

In addition, in the 1st picture, you can see on the lower left corner of the front panel, I cut a slot through the board to allow the OD=1" solid aluminum rod to go through (on both sides). This is to allow the rods to be pulled out, and put a keyboard/mouse tray on top of them so I don't have to swap out the F-16 front panel in order to play regular keyboard/mouse games. You can see a lot of screw holes for adjusting the height of the front panel. So, it can match exactly where it is in VR (3 DoF, Y, Z, and pitch).

Oh, and the mouse is on the right hand side on top of a little arm, see the 3rd picture.




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