The Awesome Button

An anonymous reader writes "An awesome hardware hack which demonstrates how easily USB-based human interface devices (eg, Keyboards and Mice) can be created using the Arduino software environment." A very nice little project based on the Teensy USB Development Board. Reminds me of the breadboard electronics projects my Dad used to work on with me many years ago. "Great fun for young and old," you might say.

Comments

Re:Did anybody read this as human usb device?

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse, do not click

Re:WE KNOW

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't V-USB, which requires pretty advanced C programming knowledge. It's based on the Arduino software, which makes it far easier and more accessible.

Sure, the final result is the same if you're in that elite C coder camp, and you probably even view Arduino as a toy not worthy of your attention.

But for the rest of us, Arduino makes the things that ought to be easy, well, easy. You could even same it's awesome^H^H^H^H^H^H excellent.

The HID interface is nice.

[Animats]

Yes, the USB HID interface is quite easy to use. I've dealt with it from the other side, using a Logitec steering wheel, mouse, and pedals to control a robot vehicle.

Force feedback via that interface is lame, though. I wanted to have the steering wheel track what the vehicle steering was actually doing, so you'd feel the resistance of the real steering. You could spin the steering wheel, and it would take a second or so for the real vehicle's steering to catch up. But the HID interface for steering wheels is more like an audio device, intended for vibration, not positional feedback.

Incidentally, you can have many HID devices, and they don't have to pretend to be the main mouse and keyboard. Applications aware of them can use them for other inputs.

Re:Don't Click The Link!

[YrWrstNtmr]

I don't click TinyURL or bit.ly links as a matter of course.

Re:Don't Click The Link!

[Ant P.]

Which base64-decodes to:

<title>Your url anti-shortener works?</title><img src=http://bit.ly/ejGjtK height=100% />

Which, predictably, redirects to this:

~ $ curl -I http://bit.ly/ejGjtK
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved
Server: nginx
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2011 17:40:20 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: _bit=4da09a04-0007f-06d8f-f4ac8fa8;domain=.bit.ly;expires=Thu Oct 6 13:40:20 2011;path=/; HttpOnly
Cache-control: private; max-age=90
Location: http://goatse.ru/hello.jpg
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Length: 118

Custom game controller

[stevegee58]

Think of the custom game controller possibilities for PC-based gaming.

With some custom DIY mechanical design you could make foot controls, chair arm controls, etc all fed through the keyboard interface.
This little USB gadget makes it much easier.

Awesome!

Re:Custom game controller

[Servaas]

You also use a 2 dollar throwaway keyboard, rip out the print board and solder directly to a keyboard interface. Sure you loose the keyboard codes that you use but its cheaper, easier, and entirely not my idea. But I am using it to make me an SNES pad to USB.

Re:Custom game controller

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Every keyboard I've seen have a huge circuit board, how to do deal with that? It would seem the teensy would be better, it's already small, and maybe less prone to failure vs. using a cut-up keyboard circuit board.

Re:Custom game controller

[mrmeval]

http://hackedgadgets.com/2010/05/10/computer-keyboard-disassembly-and-cleaning/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Hacking-a-USB-Keyboard/

It's a tiny board. the chip is under a blob of goo. The only downside is it has to be a working keyboard so you can use a multimeter to know what pins goes to what key. It's tedious but not terribly hard. Once you know the key matrix you have for the princely sum of 9 dollars a USB dongle that you can wire up how ever you want. You literally have as many inputs as keys.

What I do not know is if it's possible to assign one keyboard to normal tasks and have the hacked keyboard only do some specific thing.

Need a Slashdot button

[PPH]

"In Soviet Russia..."
"Personally, I welcome our .... overlords."
"You insensitive clod!"
"CowboyNeal is a .... "

Re:awesome button; gateway to hymenology (updated)

[WrongSizeGlass]

do monkeys have an awesome button?

Monkeys don't need an awesome button because monkeys are inherently awesome.

It writes the word "awesome".

[jfengel]

Attention writers and summary writers: they key information (like "What does it do?") goes FIRST. Not buried in the middle of a paragraph. DEFINITELY not to be omitted entirely from the summary.

So, this is the sentence from TFA that should have begun the article and the summary:

It’s a plug-and-play USB device that will type a random synonym for the word “awesome” when the button is pressed.

Then the rest of us can say, "Gosh, that sounds pretty damn lame" and move on with our lives far more efficiently.

Re:It writes the word "awesome".

[pavon]

Of course, Iâ(TM)m not totally serious about this particular application, but I wanted to show how you can make your own custom USB human interface device

The actual point was exactly what the summary said; to show how to make simple USB HID devices. The specific example used to demonstrate this was immaterial. In other words, just because "Hello World" is a lame program doesn't mean that tutorials including it are.

[facepalm]

[PhreakOfTime]

That is why it is called 'slang'.

It is not supposed to mean what the original definition is.

If you are old enough, you would probably have taken people to task for misusing the word 'square'. Which amusingly enough, would have made you one :)

Re:Obligitory Arduino Fetish Rant

[billstewart]

Arduino gives you all the pieces you need to start using microcontrollers - hardware and software environments, lots of contributed libraries and applications. If you want to write stuff from scratch you can, but if you want to get started building your blinky-light thing, it's all there, and then you can go on to more complex projects. It has a few limitations (Teensy gets around the USB-vs-serial issues, for instance), but it's pretty complete and extremely expandable. If you're more interested in tweaking bits, you can use many different tools, but if you're really trying to add blinky lights to your backpack or move the servo arms on a robot thingy or program the lights on your Christmas tree to respond to music or controlling your thermostat, you can use the Arduino tools to do that without diving into the bit-bashing first.

And yes, you could have just bought the AVR ATmega chip yourself, but then you'd have needed a in-circuit chip-programmer device, which costs just about the same as an Arduino, and you can load a program into the Arduino to make it be a chip-programmer, so you might as well buy the Arduino anyway.