Emulating A Bluetooth Keyboard With The ESP32

February 13, 2020 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

Most people associate the ESP family of microcontrollers with WiFi, which makes sense as they’ve become the solution of choice for getting your project online quickly and easily. But while the WiFi capability might be the star of the show, the ESP32 also comes equipped with Bluetooth; we just don’t see people using it nearly as often. If you’re looking to get started using Bluetooth on the ESP32, then this simple wireless macro keypad from [Brian Lough] would be a great way to get started.

From a hardware standpoint, this project is incredibly straightforward. All you need to do is connect a membrane keypad up to the GPIO pins on the ESP32. Adding in a battery is a nice touch, and you probably would want to put it into a enclosure of some sort, but as a proof of concept it doesn’t get much easier than this. In this case [Brian] is using the TinyPICO board, but your personal ESP32 variant of choice will work just as well.

The rest of the project is all software, which [Brian] walks us through in the video after the break. There’s a preexisting library for Bluetooth Human Interface Device (HID) emulation on the ESP32, but it needs to be manually installed in the Arduino IDE. From there, he demonstrates how you can build up a functioning keyboard, including tricks such as sending multiple virtual keys at once.

In the past we’ve seen the ESP32 used to create a Bluetooth game controller, but the ability to emulate a keyboard obviously offers quite a bit more flexibility. With a practical demonstration of how easy as it is to turn this low-cost microcontroller into a wireless input device, hopefully we’ll start seeing more projects that utilize the capability.

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Up Your Game With DIY Headset Motion Tracking

February 2, 2020 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

While there’s been a lot of advancements in VR gaming over the last couple of years, plenty of folks are still happy enough to just stare at their monitor. But that’s not to say some of those fancy head-tracking tricks wouldn’t be a welcome addition to their repertoire. For players who are literally looking to get their head in the game, [Adrian Schwizgebel] has created qeMotion.

The idea here is simple enough: attach a motion sensor to a standard gaming headset (here a MPU-6050 IMU), and use the data from it to virtually “press” keys through USB HID emulation. Many first person shooter games offer the ability to lean left or right by pressing Q or E respectively, so all [Adrian] had to do was map the appropriate accelerometer readings to those keys for it to work seamlessly with popular titles such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and Insurgency.

The concept might be basic, but the execution is anything but. Rather than just duct taping an Arduino to his headset, [Adrian] designed a very slick 3D printed enclosure for the electronics that sits on his desk. While they haven’t all been implemented yet, the devices features indicator lights and buttons to switch through various modes. The sensor on the headset has similarly been encased in a very professional looking 3D printed box, complete with a nice braided cable to link it to the desk unit.

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a head tracking project, and most of those utilized something like the Wii Remote. Adding sensors to a person’s head normally wouldn’t be an ideal situation, but if you’re going to be wearing the headset anyway to listen to the game and chat, it’s not really a problem. If your hair is too nice for the qeMotion, you could always try doing something similar with computer vision.

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A Tiny USB Hub For All Your Hardware Modding Needs

February 2, 2020 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

Going all the way hack to the heady days of Eee PC modding, hardware hackers have been on the hunt for small USB hubs that can easily be liberated from their enclosures and integrated into whatever project they happen to be working on. From time to time you see recommendations out there for makes and models which lend themselves to this sort of repurposing, but it’s seemed more difficult than necessary to source such a basic component.

Which is why [RETROCUTION] has developed a USB hub that’s not only extremely small, but relatively easy to assemble with only six components. Plus best of all, they are dirt cheap.

When you add up the cost of getting the PCBs made and buying all the SMD components, the per-unit price of these hubs is only going to be a few dollars. If you’ve got what it takes to make the PCBs in-house, even better. Considering how much easier these things could make other projects, it seems more than worth the upfront cost.

The star of the show is the FE1.1s, a four port USB 2.0 controller in a SSOP-28 package. As of this writing, it goes for about 25 cents from the usual overseas sources (even less, for larger orders). Add to the mix a few 10 μF ceramic capacitors, a 2.7 kΩ resistor, and a 12 MHz crystal.

There’s no provision for actual USB ports in the design, but they would just take up space anyway; this hub is intended to be directly soldered to the other devices. Incidentally, to reduce the number of traces and pads on the PCB, there aren’t power lines for the downstream devices either. So you’ll need to power them separately.

The passives are 0603, but the crystal is a good old fashioned through-hole component. [RETROCUTION] assembles the boards with a solder paste stencil and a hot air station, but if you’ve got a little practice, it’s certainly something you could do with an iron. With such a straightforward design, you could build a lifetime supply of these itty-bitty hubs in an afternoon. That’s certainly our plan, anyway.

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A Retro Touch Pad You Can Use On Modern Computers

January 22, 2020 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

As [Jan Derogee] explains in the faux-retro video after the break, drawing on classic 8-bit computers was something of a pain. The rudimentary light pens and joysticks of the 1980s allowed for free-form input, but were clumsy and awkward to use. Which is why he set out to create an ideal drawing device for the C64 using modern electronics. For the sake of completion, he also gave it a USB HID mode so it would work on somewhat more modern computers.

His device, which he’s calling the Commo Pad, looks like it could have been transported here directly from the 1980s, but it’s built from entirely new hardware. The case is actually made of wood that [Jan] sanded and painted to give it that chunky plastic aesthetic that we all know and love, and the retro artwork on the touch panel really goes a long way to sell the vintage vibe.

Speaking of which, the touch panel is perhaps the most interesting component of the entire build. It’s actually a resistive panel that was meant for mounting to an LCD that [Jan] has connected to an Arduino. All he had to do was provide a stable frame for it and print out some art work to slide in behind it.

The Arduino and associated electronics allow the Commo Pad to be picked up by the C64 as either a joystick or mouse, which means it doesn’t need any custom software on the computer side to function. Similarly, it can also mimic a USB mouse if you want to plug it into something made a bit later than 1982. Should you be so inclined to make it wireless, the addition of a Bluetooth seems like it would be relatively trivial.

If the Commo Pad doesn’t have enough of a retro-futuristic vibe for your tastes, we recently covered a custom optical touch panel that looked like it could double as a prop from Blade Runner which might do the trick.

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Inputs Of Interest: Tongues For Technology

January 21, 2020 by Kristina Panos 23 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of Inputs of Interest. In this column, we’re going to take a look at various input devices and methods, discuss their merits, give their downsides a rundown, and pontificate about the possibilities they present for hackers. I’ll leave it open to the possibility of spotlighting one particular device (because I already have one in mind), but most often the column will focus on input concepts.

A mouth mouse can help you get your input issues licked. Via @merchusey on Unsplash

Some inputs are built for having fun. Some are ultra-specific shortcuts designed to do work. Others are assistive devices for people with low mobility. And many inputs blur the lines between these three ideas. This time on Inputs of Interest, we’re going to chew on the idea of oral inputs — those driven by the user’s tongue, teeth, or both.

Unless you’ve recently bitten it, burned it, or had it pierced, you probably don’t think much about your tongue. But the tongue is a strong, multi-muscled organ that rarely gets tired. It’s connected to the brain by a cranial nerve, and usually remains undamaged in people who are paralyzed from the neck down. This makes it a viable input-driving option for almost everyone, regardless of ability. And yet, tongues and mouths in general seem to be under-utilized as input appendages.

Ideally, any input device should be affordable and/or open source, regardless of the driving appendage. Whether the user is otherwise able-bodied or isn’t, there’s no reason the device shouldn’t be as useful and beautiful as possible.

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Arcade Buttons Make A Great Multimedia Keyboard

December 22, 2019 by Zoe Skyforest 4 Comments

[Giovanni Bernardo] has a very important job – managing the audio for several Christmas events. Desiring a simple and effective control interface, he designed a dedicated media keyboard to run the show.

The project began with an Arduino Leonardo, commonly used in projects that aim to create a USB Human Interface Device. [Giovanni] then installed the HID-Project library from [Nicohood]. This was used to enable the device to emulate media buttons typically found on keyboards, something the standard Arduino HID libraries were unable to do. It’s a useful tool, and one that can be implemented on even standard Arduino Unos when used in combination with the HoodLoader2 bootloader.

For ease of use and a little bit of cool factor, arcade buttons were used for the media functions. Simple to wire up, cheap, and with a great tactile feel, they’re a popular choice for fun human interface projects. It’s all wrapped up in a neat plastic box with Dymo labels outlining the functions. It’s a neat and tidy build that should make running the Christmas show a cinch!

Macro Foot Stool Helps Me Get A Leg Up On Work

December 20, 2019 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

Macros are meant to make our lives easier, but they live up to this promise with mixed results. Generally speaking, a macro is a special combination of keys on the keyboard that execute a custom task — their goal is to speed up your productivity by getting away from mousing through menus. But once a macro requires more than two keys, they can get a bit cumbersome to input. I have personally found that repeated use of macros that require ctrl+shift can potentially cause problems. I don’t know about you (and your repetitive stress mileage may vary), but personal injury is the polar opposite of what I want from something that’s supposed to be convenient.

The more I thought about how nice it would be to have a field of dedicated one-punch macro keys, the more incomplete my life seemed without it. Every uncomfortable three-key shortcut I chorded was more motivational than the last.

I love keyboard shortcuts, and not just because I prefer keyboard navigation in general. A lot of little things about writing for the web can be streamlined with shortcuts, like writing html tags and doing image manipulation. And I’m always looking for a better workflow to pin down my fleeting mental fragments, at least until that dark day that I can turn on Dropbox Thoughts™ and burn my brainwaves directly to disk.

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