One Of The Worst Keyboards Ever, Now An Arduino Peripheral

October 24, 2022 by Jenny List 39 Comments

For British kids of a certain age, their first experience of a computer was very likely to have been in front of a Sinclair ZX81. The lesser-known predecessor to the wildly-successful ZX Spectrum, it came in at under £100 and sported a Z80 processor and a whopping 1k of memory. In the long tradition of Sinclair products it had a few compromises to achieve that price point, the most obvious of which was a 40-key membrane keyboard. Those who learned to code on its frustrating lack of tactile feedback may be surprised to see an Arduino project presenting it as the perfect way to easily hook up a keyboard to an Arduino.

Like many retrocomputing parts, the ZX81 ‘board has been re-manufactured, to the joy of many a Sinclair enthusiast. It’s thus readily available and relatively cheap (we think they can be found for less than the stated 20 euros!), so surprisingly it’s a reasonable choice for an Arduino project. The task of trying to define by touch the imperceptible difference in thickness of a ZX81 key will bring a true retrocomputing experience to a new generation. Perhaps if it can be done on an Mbed then someone might even make a ZX81 emulator on the Arduino.

We’re great fans of the ZX81 here at Hackaday, for some of us it was that first computer. Long may it continue to delight its fans!

Hackaday Prize 2022: A Cheap And Effective Mouth Joystick Mouse

October 19, 2022 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Some people have issues using regular computer mice, and need alternative input devices that suit their needs. [Olman Orozco] designed an affordable mouth-joystick intended to work as a mouse to suit that very use case.

A simple frame allows the controller to be held near the mouth for use.

The build is based on a simple USB gamepad. A mouse emulator program is used to turn the thumbstick movements into mouse movements, and button presses into mouse clicks.

The trick is that the thumbstick is turned into a mouth-activated joystick, making the device perfect for those with limited-to-no movement in their arms. This is achieved with a pen body used to extend the joystick so it can be readily actuated with the mouth. A custom puff-switch is also integrated into the mouth-joystick, built out of a balloon, bottle caps, and a micro switch. This enables the user to click on things without the need for another button.

Overall, it’s a great hack that turns cheap, everyday components into a useful piece of accessibility hardware. As a bonus, it can be built using only simple tools. [Olman] notes there’s no need for a 3D printer or other advanced parts or tools to build the device.

Game controllers are often important devices when it comes to accessibility hacking, as we’ve seen before. Continue reading “Hackaday Prize 2022: A Cheap And Effective Mouth Joystick Mouse” →

A left-hand side unit of a split keyboard. The keys are black with RGB lighting and the key legends are displayed on small OLED screens in each key.

Poly Keyboard Has Screens In Every Key

October 17, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 18 Comments

Aspiring polyglots can be stymied by differing keyboard layouts and character sets when switching between languages. [Thomas Pollak]’s Poly Keyboard circumvents this problem by putting a screen in every key of the keyboard.

In his extensive build logs, [Pollak] details the different challenges he’s faced while bringing this amazing keyboard to life. For example, the OLED screens need glyph rendering to handle the legends on the keys. Since the goal is true universal language support, he used the Adafruit-GFX Library as a beginning and was able to extend support to Japanese, Korean, and Arabic so far in his custom fork of QMK.

The attention to detail on this build is really impressive. Beside the dedication to full glyph support, [Pollak] has measured the amount of extra force the flex cables from the OLEDs add to the actuation of the keyswitches. For the Gateron yellow switch he tested, the difference was about 62.2 g versus the initial 49.7 g.

In case you’re thinking you’ve seen other screen keyboard projects, [Pollak] includes a roundup of similar projects in his logs as well. This isn’t the first keyboard we’ve seen here at Hackaday with an OLED on top of a keyswitch, although [Voidstar Lab]’s MiRage only has three screen keys that were removed in a later iteration. If you’d like a more conventional fixed display in your keyboard, check out [Peng Zhihui]’s modular board with an e-ink display and haptic feedback knob.

Continue reading “Poly Keyboard Has Screens In Every Key” →

A schematic explaining the workings of the Commodore 64's joystick port

Bluetooth Interface Adds Rumble Feedback To Commodore 64 Games

October 8, 2022 by Robin Kearey 6 Comments

Nothing says “1980s gaming” like a black joystick with a single red fire button. But if you prefer better ergonomics, you can connect modern gamepads to your retrocomputers thanks to a variety of modern-to-classic interface adapters. These typically support just the directional pad and one or two action buttons, leaving out modern features like motion control and haptic feedback.

That’s a bit of a shame, because we think it would be pretty cool to feel that shock in our hands whenever Pitfall Harry drowns in quicksand or Frogger gets hit by traffic. We’re therefore happy to report that [Ricardo Quesada] has decided to add rumble functionality to the Bluetooth-to-Joystick-port interface that he’s been working on. He demonstrates the feature on his Commodore 64 in the video embedded after the break.

Naturally, any software needs to be adapted to support haptic feedback, but a trickier problem turned out to be the hardware: joystick ports are input-only devices and therefore cannot send “enable rumble” signals to any connected gamepads. [Ricardo] found a clever way around this, using the analog inputs on the joystick port that were typically used for paddle-type controllers.

The analog-to-digital converter inside the computer works by applying a pulse signal to the analog port and measuring the time it takes to discharge a capacitor. The modern gamepad interface simply detects whether these pulses are present; they can be enabled or disabled through software by toggling the analog readout on the joystick port. This way, the joystick port can be used to send a single bit of information to any device connected to it.

[Ricardo] developed patches for Rambo: First Blood part II and Leman to enable rumble functionality. He describes the process in detail in his blog post, which should enable anyone who knows their way around 6502 machine code to add rumble support to their favorite games.

The adapter works with a variety of retro systems that use the Atari-style joystick interface, but if you’re an Apple II user, you might want to look at this Raspberry Pi-based project that interfaces with its nonstandard joystick interface. If you’re into wireless gaming in general, be sure to also check out our history of wireless game controllers.

Continue reading “Bluetooth Interface Adds Rumble Feedback To Commodore 64 Games” →

Five-Foot Keyboard Lays It All On The Line

October 7, 2022 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

We would bet that among the most technologically-inclined of our readership, there are plenty of hunt-and-peck typists. Because of course, typing quickly and from the home row has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with practice and rote muscle memorization. But what if the keyboard was all home row?

That’s right — Google Japan (translated) is back at it with another joke peripheral that happens to be 100% real and open-source. Whether you want to keep your distance from others while you toil at the coffee shop, or really, really want to get into the pair programming thing, this is the keyboard for you. While the prototype was a whopping seven feet long (or wide, whatever), the final version is shorter and friendlier, and can double as a walking stick on those outdoor sanity breaks with the addition of a protective shoe.

As with their mug keyboard, we appreciate the work that went into making this keyboard real just as much as the joke itself. Our favorite factoid has to be that this is made up of 17 different circuit boards, including the control board. Be sure to check out the fairly hilarious promo video after the break.

Continue reading “Five-Foot Keyboard Lays It All On The Line” →

Custom Macro Pad Helps Deliver Winning Formulas

October 5, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 18 Comments

For those of us with science and engineering backgrounds, opening the character map or memorizing the Unicode shortcuts for various symbols is a tedious but familiar part of writing reports or presentations. [Magne Lauritzen] thought there had to be a better way and developed the Mathboard.

With more than 80 “of the most commonly used mathematical operators” and the entire Greek alphabet, the Mathboard could prove very useful to a wide number of disciplines. Hardware-wise, the Mathboard is a 4×4 macro pad, but the special sauce is in the key set implementation firmware. While the most straightforward approach would be to pick 16 or 32 symbols for the board, [Magne] felt that didn’t do the wide range of Unicode symbols justice. By implementing a system of columns and layers, he was able to get 6+ symbols per key, giving a much greater breadth of symbols than just 16 keys and a shift layer. The symbols with a dot next to them unlock variants of that symbol by double or triple-tapping the key. For instance, a lower or capital case of a Greek letter.

The Mathboard currently works in Microsoft Office’s equation editor and as a plain-text Unicode board. [Magne] is currently working on LaTeX support and hopes to add Open Office support in the future. This device was an honorable mention in our Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals Contest. If you’d like to see another interesting math-themed board, check out the one on the MCM/70 from 1974.

An All-In-One Serial Printer Playground

September 22, 2022 by Jenny List 10 Comments

One of the peripherals of most desire for a microcomputer-obsessed youth in the 1980s was a printer, probably a dot-matrix device. In the decades since, printers have passed into being almost a piece of discardable junk as cheap inkjets can be found in any garage sale. That’s not to say that there’s not plenty of fun to be had hacking older types though, and there are plenty of small thermal printers out there to play with. [Tanmoydutta] has provided a platform that may help, in the form of an ESP32-C3-based serial printer controller.

On board is a level shifter for the 5 volt printer electronics and all the appropriate connectors for the printer, as well as the ESP and onboard USB interface. It’s a networked print server, but one which is entirely and completely hackable. We think the printer in question is this one sold by Adafruit.

So this board makes easier a whole host of printer-related projects, and should you try it you will no doubt finding yourself ankle-deep in little curly pieces of paper. This printer’s not the only one in town though, don’t forget the cheap Bluetooth printers!