2015-08-21 (F) Weekly Summary

This week has been a lot about coding. With codebender.cc it's not quite as boring but that's my opinion. Embedding live code into these blog posts should give a better idea of what's happening without consuming precious space.

Typing started with basic letters and numbers. The string "24HourEngineer" was typed. It could have been typed with spaces and should have been for the demonstration but just showing numbers, lower-case letters and upper-case letters was a strong start. After the basic alphanumeric glyphs were programmed some of the more advanced characters were investigated. The chords and keys shown for the original Spiffchorder's far thumb were not what I wanted. They reflected a desire to replicate the number pad, which could poorly emulate a mouse, but my plans are to eventually integrate an accelerometer to use as a mouse. Only two if the keys in this chordset were kept while the rest were mapped to the outputs I thought would work best.

Code and output showing basic typing

Remapped chordset

By the end of the week a detail chordmap, modeled after the originals, was created. It showed the inputs and prefixes the same way but showed which chords I changed in blue and the gold colored boxes are unused chords which could be programmed with macros or other useful keys a user may want.

Chordset

On Tuesday the programming was finished and a working wired keyboard was possible. This included all the letters and numbers plus special characters and all three mouse buttons. As I wanted to accomplish at this step, someone could immediately build a functional wired keyboard by following the posts to date. It would still require a key set but there are a variety of ways to make that. A wired keyboard could be used at a desk or connected to a mobile device with an adapter. A desktop version of the keyboard will be constructed in later blog posts.

Code for a wired keyboard

After the programming was done for the wired keyboard serial data was programmed so the processor could talk to a Bluefruit Ez-Key which acts like a Bluetooth keyboard but will accept serial data and "type" it. At first the data came out as typed versions of the keys I tried to press but the program command was changed so the desired glyphs were able to be typed.

Text typed over Bluetooth

Code for wireless keyboard

Code for the program has been easily available due to codebender so the rest of the files were also made public. These files include the stl files for 3D printing the most recent wrist mounted keypad parts and the OpenSCAD files for making changes. A link to download the Arduino code for the wired keyboard was made. Spreadsheets with the chordset were also published, it can be downloaded as an Excel file, pdf, or the image right in blog, a png, can be downloaded.


Downloadable Files:

• Wrist Mounted Chording Keyboard. All STL printing Files. If you want to print.
• Parts for index, middle, and ring fingers. 
• Parts for pinky finger.
• Thumbboard.
• Servo lever.
• Wrist base.
• Wrist Mounted Chording Keyboard. All OpensCAD Files. If you want to make changes.
• Parts for index, middle, and ring fingers. 
• Parts for pinky finger.
• Thumbboard.
• Servo lever.
• Wrist base.
• Arduino Code for wired keyboard
• Spreadsheet for chords.
• Pdf
• Excel

The rest of the weekly summaries have been arranged by date.

First time here?

Completed projects from year 1.

Completed projects from year 2.

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