Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One Where Shift Happens

September 28, 2021 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

It’s been an exciting few weeks for me personally on the clacking front. I got a couple of new-to-me keyboards including my first one with ALPS switches, an old TI/99A keyboard with Futaba MD switches, and a couple of what are supposed to be the original Cherry switches (oh man they clack so nicely!) But enough about my keyboard-related fortuitousness, and on to the hacks and clacks!

Putting My Pedals to the Metal

I picked up this Kinesis Savant Elite triple foot pedal from Goodwill. It works fine, but I don’t like the way it’s programmed — left arrow, right arrow, and right mouse click. I found the manual and the driver on the Kinesis website easily enough, but I soon learned that you need a 32-bit computer to program it. Period. See, Kinesis never wrote an updated driver for the original Savant Elite pedal, they just came out with a new one and people had to fork over another $200 or figure something else out.

I’m fresh out of 32-bit computers, so I tried running the program in XP-compatibility mode like the manual says, but it just doesn’t work. Oh, and the manual says you can brick it if you don’t do things correctly, so that’s pretty weird and scary. It was about this time that I started to realize how easy it would be to open it up and just replace the controller with something much more modern. Once I got inside, I saw that all three switches use JST plugs and right angle header. Then I though hey, why not just re-use this set-up? I might have to make a new board, but it how awesome would it be to plug these pedals’ JSTs into my own board?

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The Astronomical Promises Of The Fisher Space Pen

September 23, 2021 by Kristina Panos 57 Comments

We’ve all heard of the Fisher Space Pen. Heck, there’s even an episode of Seinfeld that focuses on this fountain of ink, which is supposed to be ready for action no matter what you throw at it. The legend of the Fisher Space Pen says that it can and will write from any angle, in extreme temperatures, underwater, and most importantly, in zero gravity. While this technology is a definite prerequisite for astronauts in space, it has a long list of practical Earthbound applications as well (though it would be nice if it also wrote on any substrate).

You’ve probably heard the main myth of the Fisher Space Pen, which is that NASA spent millions to develop it, followed quickly by the accompanying joke that the Russian cosmonauts simply used pencils. The truth is, NASA had already tried pencils and decided that graphite particles were too much of an issue because they would potentially clog the instruments, like bags of ruffled potato chips and unsecured ant farms.

A Space-Worthy Instrument Indeed

Usually, it’s government agencies that advance technology, and then it trickles down to the consumer market at some point. But NASA didn’t develop the Space Pen. No government agency did. Paul Fisher of the Fisher Pen Company privately spent most of the 1960s working on a pressurized pen that didn’t require gravity in the hopes of getting NASA’s attention and business. It worked, and NASA motivated him to keep going until he was successful.

An original Fisher Space Pen AG-7 atop the Apollo 11 flight plan. — The pen that went to the moon. Image via Sebastien Billard

Then they tested the hell out of it in all possible positions, exposed it to extreme temperatures between -50 °F and 400 °F (-45 °C to 204 °C), and wrote legible laundry lists in atmospheres ranging from pure oxygen to a total vacuum. So, how does this marvel of engineering work?

The Fisher Space Pen’s ink cartridge is pressurized to 45 PSI with nitrogen, which keeps oxygen out in the same manner as potato chip bags. Inside is a particularly viscous, gel-like ink that turns to liquid when it meets up with friction from the precision-fit tungsten carbide ballpoint.

Between the viscosity and the precision fit of the ballpoint, the pen shouldn’t ever leak, but as you’ll see in the video below, (spoiler alert!) snapping an original Space Pen cartridge results in a quick flood of thick ooze as the ink is forced out by the nitrogen.

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Mini Wireless Thermal Printers Get Arduino Library (and MacOS App)

September 21, 2021 by Donald Papp 24 Comments

[Larry Bank]’s Arduino library to print text and graphics on BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) thermal printers has some excellent features, and makes sending wireless print jobs to a number of common models about as easy as can be. These printers are small, inexpensive, and wireless. That’s a great mix that makes them attractive for projects that would benefit from printing out a hardcopy.

It’s not limited to simple default text, either. Fancier output can be done using Adafruit_GFX library-style fonts and options, which sends the formatted text as graphics. You can read all about what the library can do in this succinct list of concise functions.

But [Larry] hasn’t stopped there. While experimenting with microcontrollers and BLE thermal printers, he also wanted to explore talking to these printers from his Mac using BLE directly. Print2BLE is a MacOS application that allows dragging image files into the application’s window, and if the preview looks good, the print button makes it come out of the printer as a 1-bpp dithered image.

Small thermal printers make for neat projects, like this retrofitted Polaroid camera, and now that these little printers are both wireless and economical, things can only get easier with the help of a library like this. Of course, if that’s all starting to look a little too easy, one can always put the thermal back in thermal printing by using plasma, instead.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Grabbity Gloves

September 21, 2021 by Kristina Panos 14 Comments

I keep saying I need to stay away from auction sites, but then I wouldn’t have as much fodder for Hackaday, would I? As I write this, I’m waiting on a Dell AT101W, which will be my first keeb with Alps switches. Well, hopefully it has Alps SKCM salmon or black switches — according to Deskthority, it might have rubber domes. If it doesn’t keyboard, I will probably salvage the switches and build something more ergonomic. Either way, I’m thinking we need a post about Alps switches, because some people think they’re even better than Cherry MX switches.

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An optical keyboard that works using IR LEDs and phototransistors.

Take A Look At This Optical Keyboard

September 15, 2021 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

Making keyboards is easy, right? Just wire up a bunch of switches matrix-style to a microcontroller, slap some QMK and a set of keycaps on there and you’re good to go. Well, yeah, that might work for cushier environments like home offices and Hackaday dungeons, but what if you need to give input under water, in a volatile area, or anywhere else you’d have to forego the clacking for something hermetically sealed? Mechanical switches can only take you so far — at some point, you have to go optical.

This gorgeous keyboard works with reflected IR beams to determine when a finger is occupying a given key site (because what else are you going to call them?). Each key site has an IR LED and a phototransistor and it works via break-beam.

[BenKoning] wanted a solution that would be easy for others to build, with a low-cost BOM and minimal software processing cost. It just so happens to be extremely good-looking, as well.

The reason you can’t see the guts is that black layer — it passes infrared light, but is black to the eye. The frosted layer diffuses the beams until a finger is close enough to register. Check it out in action after the break, and then feed your optical key switch cravings with our own [Bob Baddeley]’s in-depth exploration of them.

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A couple of joysticks wired up to a Teensy for prototyping.

Custom Joystick Build Guide Should Point You In The Right Direction

September 8, 2021 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

Over the last two years, [benkster] has been perfecting their ideal flight controller. Like many people, they started out with a keyboard and mouse and eventually moved on to a joystick. While a HOTAS (hands on throttle-and-stick — e.g. a yoke controller with inputs right there on the sides) might have been the next logical step, those things cost too much. Naturally, the answer is to build one, ideally for less money. Hey, it could happen.

The design went from just an idea to a cardboard prototype, and then to a wooden enclosure and later, a 3D-printed case. Since [benkster] learned a great deal along the way, they want to give back to the community with a comprehensive joystick design/build guide so that others don’t have to start from zero, overwhelmed with information.

[benkster] wanted three joysticks, a bunch of big buttons, a throttle, a display to show component status (as in, is joystick #3 a joystick right now or a WASD keyboard?), and immersive details everywhere — you know, a million buttons and switches to give it that cockpit feel. [benkster] is using a Teensy 4 to control two 3-axis joysticks and one 2-axis stick. Since this adds up to too many axes for Windows/DirectX to read in, the 2-axis stick is used as a WASD keyboard.

This guide is a great place to start, especially for folks who may be newer to electronics. There are nice introductions to many types of components and tidbits that are relevant outside the world of joysticks.

You want immersive flight simulation away from the PC? Here’s a printable flexure-based ‘stick that snaps right on your Xbox controller and pushes the buttons.

Giving A Console Controller Mouse-Like Precision Aim

September 4, 2021 by Danie Conradie 23 Comments

Controller vs keyboard and mouse is one of the never-ending battles in the world of gaming, with diehard proponents on both sides of the fence. [Tech Yesterday] has been working to create a controller that’s the best of both worlds. His latest Mouse Pro Controller V5 features an inverted mouse riding on ball bearings.

Mouse Pro Controller V1-3‘s main focus was to create the largest possible moving surface for an optical thumb mouse for precision aiming. However, [Tech Yesterday] found that one’s thumb doesn’t work well for traversing a large flat surface, but works better with a concave surface. On V4 he flipped the optical sensor around, embedding it in the controller, with a small circular “mouse pad” attached to his thumb. The concave surface was made from the diffuser of a large LED light bulb. It had slightly too much friction for [Tech Yesterday]’s liking, so he embedded an array of small ball bearings in the surface using magnets.

While this “thumb mouse” has excellent precision, it can be a bit slow when you need to make large movements, like when performing 360° no scopes for the clips. For these situations, [Tech Yesterday] embedded a thumb stick on the back of the controller to allow for fast sideways movements using his middle fingers.

[Tech Yesterday] is already working on V6, but feels close to the limit of his skills. If you are interested in working with him, be sure to get in touch! Modding controllers for fun and performance are great, but for gamers with prosthetic fingers it’s a requirement.

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