For our Hybrid Worlds project we wanted to make keyboard wireless and networked. This is not the standard wireless that is used in normal wireless keyboards. We use xbee’s to transmit all the keystrokes to the same base station that sends the received data to a PC via serial.

I’ve used the following parts to realize this:
he keyboard side:
- 1 Arduino.
- 1 Proto shield.
- 1 xbee.
- 1 xbee adapter.
- 1 custom made AT breadboard adapter.
- Various wires.
- Software: This arduino libary.

The base station:
- 1 Arduino.
- 1 Proto shield.
- 1 xbee.
- 1 xbee adapter.
- Various wires.

Here are some pictures, first the arduino with all the components on it:

Arduino with components

And with the keyboard connected:

With mechanical keyboard

close up

And the adapter I’ve soldered to connect the AT keyboard without destroying them. Its made from an female DIN5 connector.

adapter

adapter

And the base station:

close up

On the base station you can also see our other wireless module, but because we only have two of those we switched to xbee communication, so we can mesh together several keyboards to one base station

Code and examples are on the project page here. At the bottom.