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

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.