Possible to add usb to wireless kb?

NoSmokingBandit

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I have a pretty neato wireless keyboard (microsoft wireless desktop elite keyboard model 1011) and i donth ave the receiver for it. Im not a big fan of wireless stuff anyway, id rather not fuss with the batteries all the time, so im wondering if its at all possible to rig this up as a usb kb? I dont know if this kind of thing is even possible, but i thought i'd ask. powering it via usb shouldnt be a problem as it uses 3 AA batteries and usb can deliver 5v, ill just throw a resistor in there to take it down to the 4.5v the batteries would supply, the only thing i dont know about is the other wires, of course.
 
You probably could, but you would need a schematics of the keyboard's PCB in order to find the correct locations and solder points for the wires. But that is entirely dependent on if they use the same PCB for both the wired and wireless keyboards.

Have you tried contacting Microsoft about getting a transmitter for it?
 
Actually batteries usually provide more than 1.5 when fresh, so running the keyboard on 5v would be find I would presume. And as for the insides, I doubt there are the USB - and + lines in there, or at least easily marked. Usually your keyboard will have a controller chip that is connected to the grid of buttons, and will interpret those button presses and will convert them to USB data and send them out over USB, on this wireless one, USB isn't needed, it probably sends the keystroke data in something like I2C or something to the wireless chip and that will "wireless-ize" the keystrokes. There probably isn't any USB bus inside of the keyboard. Your best bet would be to somehow find and purchase a wireless receiver, but the thing is, is that usually with wireless keyboards (unless their Bluetooth) the keyboard and the receiver are "married" meaning that you can not mix and match keyboards and receivers.

Imagine if all of the receivers were the same, if there were 2 wireless keyboards in range, the receiver would get both of their keystrokes, so to defeat that (and to defeat wireless sniffing of the keystrokes) there is some type of encryption that goes on so that only 1 receiver and 1 keyboard will work together.

Can't hurt to open up the keyboard and take some pictures of the circuit board and post them, you never know, there could be the USB data points in there somewhere.
 
I took the kb apart and theres nothing on the pcb that looks remotely useful. I tried tracing the antenna backward to see if i could find D- or D+ points, but there wasnt anything.
Meh, it was worth a shot.
 
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