Slightly over a year ago now, Raspberry Pi released its signature keyboard and hub, targeting English-speaking (primarily American and British) users.

Available in both red and white as well as black and gray color schemes, the original 79-key keyboard features three USB 2.0 type-A ports, so that it is compatible not only with all Raspberry Pi products, but can be used in conjunction with a variety of other peripheral devices as well.

This keyboard is designed to be large enough to facilitate quick typing, but small and light enough to fit if you have limited diskspace.

Here at Vilros, we keep both the red and white and black and gray variants in stock for fast and easy shipping and delivering, even during the COVID pandemic.

Now in Summer 2020, Raspberry Pi is launching a new phase to support more users in different countries by offering keyboards that match the linguistic demands of different languages. Specifically, there are now keyboards for users in Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Japan.

New Raspberry Pi Keyboards for Europe

The new keyboards in Europe are currently available in red and white (with a black and gray option coming soon).

The Portuguese version is designed specifically for users in Europe. Interestingly, in the early planning stages, developers had hoped that the Portuguese keyboard might also serve Portuguese speakers in Brazil, but they soon realized Brazilians would need their own layout. This difference is similar to the English language keyboard requirements for U.S. vs. U.K. users.

When it comes to the Scandinavian countries, there is a small but significant difference between the keyboards for Norway and Denmark. Can you spot the difference? (Hint: it pertains to the difference in use of their special alphabetic characters).

There is also a keyboard for Sweden – and the layout of the keyboard for this country has also made possible a similar (if not for all intents and purposes identical) variant for Finland.

New Raspberry Pi Keyboards for Japan

To create the Japanese Raspberry Pi keyboard, developers had to create a whole new molding in order to facilitate the arrangement of the necessary 83 keys. They also had to make possible three different sets of characters.

In building the new Japanese keyboards, developers had to reverse-engineer traditional Japanese keyboards in order to map the keycodes to the right matrix locations. They then had to test prototypes with multiple users in Japan to figure out which keys worked well and which required further tinkering.

For example, there were particular difficulties with the “Yen” key, because non-Japanese computers would read the symbol as a “/”.

However, as of early August 2020, the Japanese Raspberry Pi keyboard is officially available in both the red and white and black and gray color variants from resellers in Japan and the UK.

Do You Love the Raspberry Pi Keyboard?

Are you a Raspberry Pi Keyboard user? Which variant of the keyboard do you use and prefer? Let us know in the comments!

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