Google Japan Built a Useless Conveyor Belt Keyboard, and I Want One

My verdict: I do not care that it is a joke. I play far too much Factorio, and this thing has a conveyor belt. Straight into my collection.

Google Japan’s Gboard team unveiled the Gboard Conveyor Belt Version on 1 October, as part of a yearly tradition of absurd concept keyboards. The keys ride on moving belts, and instead of moving your hand to find a key, you keep your hand still and wait for the right key to arrive under your fingers. Google pitches it as one-handed typing that reduces fatigue. Previous years brought a rotary phone keyboard and a double-sided Möbius strip keyboard, so nobody should be surprised.

It is not for sale and it has no price. Google published the plans on GitHub, in its mozc-devices repository, so anyone can try to build one. One caution before you order parts: Hackaday looked at the build guide and found that the section on actually getting the signals into your computer is marked “TBD”, and the source code does not appear to be complete. You may end up with a very nice conveyor belt that does not type yet.

By every rule I normally apply, this fails. It does the one job a keyboard has worse than any keyboard you already own. That is not the point. A lot of us collect things, and many of them only have emotional value: a memory, a good moment, a mental image, sometimes just something that reminds us of a certain time. It is always good to have a few of those, and a keyboard that brings the letters to you on a belt is a better one than most.

Read Engadget’s piece, look at the repository yourselves, and check how complete it is before you start printing parts.