Comments on: SMIP – footpedal keyboard input

By: iank

iank — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:49:18 +0000

#15: that’s essentially what smip /is/, except I did it with a PS/2 keyboard (as that’s the only thing I had available).

By: iank

iank — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:47:15 +0000

#13: andrew, I use a USB keyboard, and plug smip into the PS/2 port.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:14:10 +0000

I have wondered about hacking a pedal onto my scope, so that I can do “force trigger” and things like adjusting the timebase while both hands are holding the probes onto the pcb. But I really need more than one button, so how about starting with a MIDI organ footboard? If there’s someone out there who could hack together a MIDI interface, a microcontroller, and an RS232 output (to connect to the scope), I reckon it could actually be a marketable product.

By: Izzy

Izzy — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:11:08 +0000

I just plugged in a second “mouse,” in this case a big serial-port trackball. I can toe the center button for autoscroll and roll my foot on the ball to control the speed. Hand or foot, both “mice” work under Windows XP.

By: n3rrd

n3rrd — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:16:14 +0000

matt,

couldn't you buy a cheap USB keyboard, and just wire a pedal to complete the circuit between a few of the pins? You'd have to test them after hooking it up to see what pins you're actually connecting together to find out the button combination... but the keyboard controller PCBs are quite small and you can get a cheap keyboard for < $10.

By: R4V3

R4V3 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:03:36 +0000

You know, my old Logitech Elite keyboard has a little scroll wheel built into it right by the normal left hand position… you can scroll it pretty easily and quickly with your pinky. I’m surprised he’d never stumbled on one of them, since the Logitech keyboards with them are usually not overly expensive (albeit the aforementioned model was recently discontinued). My current Microsoft Natural 4000 also has a little zoom slider in between the two sets of keys, and could probably easily hacked with an xmodmap setup or a custom keymap to trigger scroll events.

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:46:13 +0000

how does he use a keyboard with it since it requires a free ps/2 port?

By: t0m

t0m — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:05:10 +0000

Andrew Huang (bunnie of xbox hacking fame) did something similar about 5 years ago, with footpedals hacked to replace both ctrl & shift to make working in emacs a bit easier on the carpal tunnel. Not quite the same as contolling the scroll wheel, but hey. I remember walking into his room/board fab back in school and thinking this was pretty damn cool. Two legs bad, Four legs better!
http://www.bunniestudios.com/bunnie/proj/keypedals/

By: matt

matt — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:13:14 +0000

i’ve actually been looking for a *cheap* USB connected, single button footpedal for awhile.

i use push to talk setting for ventrilo, and that puts me down one easy-accesible key in games. i’d love to set the push-to-talk key to a pedal so i still have all my keys… especially since the only key i’ve found works out well for me (0/insert) dosen’t work when i have foward and right arrows pressed (basically while i’m moving diagonally i can’t talk, which sorta sucks for team comms).

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:56:46 +0000

would be grate to use this for racing games, just use 2 of the pedals, would love to try this my self 1 day

By: Wally Glutton

Wally Glutton — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:12:02 +0000

I’ve heard of vi (the text editor) nerds using foot pedals mapped to the ESC key. This keeps the fingers on the home row, even when switching modes.

By: punknubbins

punknubbins — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:58:05 +0000

I just started working on a foot pedal set up from the guts of a cheap dell usb keyboard. Unfortunately I have not had time to map all the pin out combinations. But the controller board is small, about 1×2 inches, and the contacts are big enough to solder to. So building a multi pedal setup that can be configured to activate any key combination I want seems doable.

By: greg schoppe

greg schoppe — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:53:23 +0000

hey xander, i've needed the same thing for sheet-music for a while. I made a two button pedal to handle page turning and some custom software to handle searching through my sheet music. If you're interested, I posted instructions for the foot pedal at http://www.instructables.com/id/EOFT2S7LZYEP28720A/

, and the software is on my website at http://www.gschoppe.com/repertoire

I hope it helps

By: Schnulli

Schnulli — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:02:36 +0000

by the way: he built smip, not simp….

By: xander

xander — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:57:34 +0000

Actually, being a laptop musician, I’ve considered many times trying to create a foot pedal board using the guts of a keyboard.