Connect a PS/2 keyboard to a microcontroller

posted Sep 29th 2009 11:00am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: tool hacks

The guys at Nerdkits have put together this tutorial on connecting a PS/2 keyboard to a microcontroller. Though this tutorial is written for one of the kits they sell, you should be able to apply this to pretty much any microcontroller. It is also a lesson in using interrupts instead of polling. They have several pre built examples ready to download as well as source code for the basic setup.

[via HackedGadgets]

Comments [10]

tagged: interrupts, keyboard, microcontroller

10 Responses to Connect a PS/2 keyboard to a microcontroller

biozz says:

September 29, 2009 at 11:07 am

is it really that hard to do it? i never found any need for a tutorial on this XD

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stealthmonkey says:

September 29, 2009 at 11:16 am

I once did this with bascom-avr… it has an integrated routine

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Agent420 says:

September 29, 2009 at 11:20 am

It’s not that hard, but it’s different enough from std serial that you’ve got to think about it for a second.

I have BASIC PS/2 code in my touchpad avr project…

http://hackaday.com/2009/07/20/touchpad-and-vfd-hacking/

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sneakypoo says:

September 29, 2009 at 11:54 am

@biozz: Can I touch you?

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biozz says:

September 29, 2009 at 12:28 pm

@Agent420
first off LOVE the name XD, and thanks ill look in to it :3

@sneakypoo … i get that allot … but yes you can touch me any time :3

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tom61 says:

September 29, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Much more impressive and a bit more useful, IMO, is bit-banging low speed USB host for HID devices like keyboards and mice. I don’t know a good guide for that off-hand, though.

PS/2 keyboards are slowly getting harder to find, and a fairly new hacker is not very likely to have them just laying around. Additionally, really small keyboards which would be great for smaller projects that need input are USB only and will not work with passive USB to PS/2 adapters.

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Amnon says:

September 29, 2009 at 2:09 pm

I have used back on 2006 the reading of 2 PS2 optical mouse as a feed back for a robot navigation .

and the protocol is very close to the keyboard one.

this is a demo of the robot with just the optical mouses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dBV5sSMCis

and 2 platphorm working togther

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Amnon says:

September 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm

for more info look at this page :
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=iw&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.robotica.co.il%2Fforums%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ft%3D2210&sl=iw&tl=en&history_state0=

and in the youtube more info .

thanks

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Entropia says:

September 30, 2009 at 2:08 am

Very nice tutorial. Need moar like this.

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niquez says:

December 19, 2009 at 1:20 pm

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