Zero To Custom MacroPad In 37 Easy Steps

October 21, 2024 by 5 Comments

[Jeremy Weatherford] clearly has a knack for explaining projects well enough for easy reproduction but goes way further than most and has created a four-part YouTube series detailing every step from project inception to the final assembly, covering all aspects of 3D modelling and PCB design for a custom MacroPad design. Many tools are introduced along the way, all of which help reduce complexity and, by extension, the scope for errors. As every beginner hacker knows, early successes breed confidence and make for better and more ambitious projects.

Part 1 covers the project motivation and scope and introduces a keyboard layout editor tool. This tool allows one to take a layout idea and generate a JSON file, which is then used to drive keyboard tools. XYZ to produce a usable KiCAD project. The tool only generates a PCB project and an associated netlist file. No schematic is created; you don’t need one for a simple layout.

A very basic keyboard layout

Part 2 is a walkthrough of the design process in KiCAD, culminating in ordering the PCB from JLCPCB and assembling the surface-mount parts. This particular design uses a controller based on the Sea-Picro RP2040 module, but there are many options if you have other preferences. [Jeremy] shows what’s possible with the selected suppliers, but you need not follow this step precisely if you have other ideas or want to use someone local.

Part 3 covers exporting the mechanical aspects of the PCB out of KiCAD and into a 3D CAD program, specifically OnShape. [Jeremy] covers some crucial details, such as how to read the mechanical drawing of the keys to work out where to place the top plate. It’s very easy to plough straight in at this stage and make a design which cannot be assembled! The plan is to use a simple laser-cut box with a bottom plate with mounting holes lining up with those on the PCB. A Top plate is created by taking the outline of the PCB and adding a little margin. An array of rectangular cutouts are designed for the keys to protrude, lining up perfectly with where the keys would be when mounted on the PCB below.  The sides of the case are formed from laser-cut sections that lock into each other and the laser-cut base—using the laser joint feature-script addon tool from the OnShape community channel. A second feature script addon is used to auto-layout the laser-cut components onto a single sheet. A CAM application called Kiri Moto is used to export for laser cutting and is available on the OnShape store.

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The 1983 Clock Four Decades In The Making

October 21, 2024 by 13 Comments

In 1983, a 14-year-old [Will] saw an LED clock in The Sharper Image store. At $250, it stayed in the store. That was a lot of money back then, especially for most teenagers. But [Will] didn’t forget. After high school, he and a friend planned to build one from scratch. They worked out how they would do it and did a little prototyping, but never really finished. Well, they never really finished at the time. Because 33 years later, [Will] decided to finally put it together. Check it out in the video below.

[Will’s] learned a lot since his original design, plus we have tech today that would have seemed like magic in the late 1980s. But he wanted to stay true to the original design, so there’s no microcontroller or smart LEDs. Just binary counters and a lot of LEDs. There’s even a 555 doing duty as a reset timer.

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Strange English Teaching Computer Might Have Been Big In Japan

October 21, 2024 by 9 Comments

[Ctrl-Alt-Rees] bought something strange on an auction site: a Japanese Cefucom-21 from 1983. No? Didn’t ring a bell for us either. The legend on the front boldly proclaims: “CCI Multipurpose SLAP Computer,” so maybe it is some kind of computer, but it is definitely strange. For one thing, the “screen” isn’t a screen at all. [Rees] has found that it has something to do with teaching English. You can see the odd beast in the video below.

We don’t know how common these were in Japan, but they appear to be virtually unknown everywhere else. Inside is a Z80 computer based on a  Sanyo PHC-25, which is a little better known.

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2024 Supercon: Third Round Of Super Speakers

October 21, 2024 by 3 Comments

The third and final round of the 2024 Supercon talks announcements brings us to the end, and the full schedule is now up on Hackaday.io.

With Supercon just a couple weeks away, we hope you have your tickets already! Stay tuned tomorrow for a badge reveal.

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Open-Source, 3D Printed Trackpad

October 21, 2024 by 22 Comments

Touchpads, or trackpads, have been around since the 1980s. Today, you can often find them in laptops and notebook computers as pointing devices. With no moving parts, a trackpad are easy to integrate into the body of a portable computer.  they’re much smaller than the traditional mouse. Until the advent of multitouch and gestures over the past two decades, though, they were generally poor substitutes for an actual mouse. These days, trackpads have enough features that some users prefer them even on their desktop computers. If you’re that type of person and don’t want to shell out a big pile of money for an Apple, Logitech, or other off-the-shelf trackpad you can always build your own.

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An SAO For Hams

October 21, 2024 by 18 Comments

Generally speaking, the Hackaday Supercon badge will always have a place for SAO (rebranded as “Supercon add-ons”), and that makes sense. We did originate them, after all. This year, though, we’ve gone all in on SAO, and, in particular, we’ve asked to see more SAOs with communication capabilities. The standard has always had an I2C bus, but few people use them. I decided I wanted to set an example and cook up a badge for Supercon. Was it hard? Yes and no. I’ll share with you a little about the board’s genesis and the issues I found. At the end, I’ll make you a special offer, if you are going to Supercon.

The Idea

The front of the SAOGNR — the SAO connector is, of course, on the back

I’ve been a ham radio operator for a very long time. In fact, July was my 47th anniversary in the radio hobby. Well, that’s not true. It was my 47th year with a license. I had been listening to shortwave long before then. So, I wanted to do something with Morse code. You don’t have to know Morse code to get a license these days, but a lot of hams enjoy it.

I set out to do a simple board that would play some Morse code messages. But that’s just another blinking light LED with a buzzer on it, too. So, naturally, I decided it would also provide Morse code output for the I2C host. That is, the SAO could be used to convert ASCII to Morse code. Sounds simple, right? Sure.

Getting Started

I wanted to use a Raspberry Pi Pico but didn’t want to violate the SAO size requirements. Luckily, there’s an RP2040-Zero module that is quite tiny and looks more or less like a normal Pico. The two big differences are plusses: they have a reset button, and instead of a normal LED, they have a WS2812b-style LED.

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I2C The Hard Way

October 21, 2024 by 12 Comments

[Igor] has an AS5600 magnetic rotary encoder chip on a breakout board. Normally, you’d think that was an easy device to work with since it has an I2C interface. But [Igor] wanted to do it the hard way. What’s the hard way? By hand. He directly manipulates the clock and data lines using some push buttons. You can see how it goes in the video below.

This is possible because the controlling device — in this case [Igor] — gets to set the clock rate, and there’s no reason it has to be regular. We have to admit that it never occurred to us to do this, but we have written “bit banged” I2C-like code before.

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