The tiny and inexpensive ESP32 microcontroller is useful for many things, but Chris Greening made something truly magical with it: a ZX Spectrum that implements that computer's famously troublesome keyboard as conductive traces on a screen-printed circuit board. "I've made something cool!" he says, accurately.
It's an ESP32-S3 based PCB. I really wanted to try out the full color silk screen printing capabilities of PCBWay and it's come out even better than I expected. The keys on the keyboard are all capacitive touch pads – so they are just copper pads on the PCB. With the S3 we've got up to 14 touch pads and the ZX Spectrum keyboard uses 8 rows with 5 columns in each row for its keyboard. …
It's not quite ready for production yet, but if there's enough interest I will do a production run and put it on sale. If you're interested then sign up here to get progress updates: https://atomic14.com/esp32spectrum
If you're one of those people who thinks the ZX Spectrum's shortcomings need to be fixed rather than compounded by modern technology, there's the ZX Spectrum Next. But why would you, when you finally have the opportunity to acquire Sinclairform Peripheral Neuropathy right here?
Previously:
• PicoZX: a portable ZX Spectrum even less pleasant to type on than the original
• The ZX Spectrum at 40 years old
• ZX Spectrum-based handheld retroconsole is pretty good
• Enhance your ZX Spectrum with this glorious backlit keyboard
