deskthority

Oh, nevermind. I now have a burning suspicion that whacky behavior is/was related to rollover. Today the <Option> key gives me .. nothing. But I can certainly cause the keyboard to spew lots of characters by rubbing my hands around on the eMate's keyboard. This is a membrane keyboard, and the keys ...

Ah, it's been quite a day. Still hacking away at my eMate300 keyboard project. Today I have successfully mapped out all keys but <OPTION>, known to windoze as <ALT>.

All of the well-behaved keys give me succinct HID reports. A press and release of "g", for example, yields the following

\2A +0A ...

Thanks! That worked great.

Ah, a new day, another puzzle.

Got my eMate300 keyboard working with wired USB on a Teensy 2.0, and then with my own PCB no less. :) Current step is transitioning to a Teensy 2++, as I will be needing the extra pins for communicating to the Bluefruit EZ-KY HID module.

But I've bogged down early. I ...

...We just want to use Bluetooth HID (human input device, including mice, keyboards, joysticks etc.) rather than have to implement all that from the ground up.

Totally understood and agreed. It's a new and sunny day here, and I've found a few positive items.

Adafruit has a BLE4.0 breakout card ...

..And then there's this - Not a Teensy, but it is Atmega32u4. Hm...

"Blend Micro is our first integrated developement board, we have "blend"ed Arduino with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (aka BLE or Bluetooth Smart) into a single board. It is targeted for makers to develop low power Internet-Of-Things ...

Got a usable keymap for my Soarer's Controller (eventually) by shoving arbitrary but unique HID_codes into unknown spots, using HID_listen to see what came out. Analyze, lather, rinse, repeat. Was puzzled about where to find all available keycode name strings, Quantalume turned me on to the fact ...

Ah, that's the ticket! Thanks!

RetroMini-kbd-teensy.jpg
I'm making great progress with my Apple eMate 300 keyboard, using Soarer's Controller. But now I'm stuck.

Please tell me, is there a complete list of the allowable KEYNAMES somewhere? The Alphas and Numerics are obvious. And I have gleaned many others from the several ...

The "diode" aspect of PD6 means that you can't sense an incoming signal on it.

Ah, that's the ticket! Shifting pin assignments so that PD6 got rid of that double-key stuff, it seems.

Mu, I -can't- totally ignore the numbers HID listen provides! I need to know WHERE they belong in the matrix. My ...

I should also note that I -am- using PD6, which runs the LED. I've seen comments that imply that it should be avoided, but (electrically) why? Is it "haunted" by the LED in some way?

OK, the good news this evening is that I have Soarer's firmware in the Teensy now, along with a .SCB file jammed full of UNASSIGNED. (No keys defined.) HID_Listen is happily showing me key presses and releases. What I can't quite figure out is the encoding (bit-packing?) of the hex numbers returned ...

OK, I'm on a roll here, gotta share the joy, and maybe get a sanity check for my planning.

I built a ADB-to-USB converter cable using the Teensy 2.0 and the ADB_USB converter provided in the tmk_keyboard firmware. Testing it with an Apple Keyboard 2 reminded me that I am grateful for the inverted ...

Restatement of my possible stepping-stones:
1) ADB-to-wired-USB with an Apple Extended II, because I have a few.
2) Matrix-to-wired-USB using the eMate 300 keyboard, building on step 1
3) Matrix-to-BT, so I can finish my eMate Mini project. (iPad Mini Gen2 housed in an eMate case.)

"Never build a square wheel where a round one already exists." Which means I will certainly be using firmware from Soarer or Hasu. :)

Piecing together what I -think- I now know, it seems like the simplest way would be to send serial scancode 3 from the Teensy into one of the BlueFruit modules ...

Yes, the two active layers of the membrane come out to pressure-point connections as in the photo. 8 lines on one, 16 on the other. (Oh, please let this be a viable solution...)

...but I have this annoying desire to understand what's going on under the hood. Is the microcontroller above looking for ...

Hi! I'm Marty, and I'm new in town. I have a project goal and need pointing in the right direction.

I'd like to "repurpose" the keyboard from the Apple eMate 300, with a hopeful goal of turning it into a BlueTooth board. Yes, I know that it's barely mechanical - undersized mechanical keys, over ...