Tipro MID mod for Autocad

katamari

05 Jan 2019, 22:11

Hello everyone. Long time since i've been here.
I come to you for a little advice. I'm starting to use Autocad at home, and even though it it possible to click my way through the menus, it's much more comfortable to use the keyboard inputs. However I happen to have an Ergodox as my main keyboard, the plit design is not very ergonomic for this task. One solution would be to have an entire layer dedicated to this, but for the moment I decided to dedicate an entire separated keyboard to it ;) .

So I dug up an old Tipro MID 96 keys, which should offer more than enough keys. Mapping the most common keyboard inputs, a whole numpad plus "space", "escape" , "enter" and 4 arrows brings me to about 55 to 60 keys.

Unfortunately Changeme still doesn't support programming over PS/2 on a 64 bit system, and to times where I was running a W7 32bit system are long gone. I wouldn't mind to much setting up a lightweight Linux for this if there is a linux utility out there, somewhere, but the hassle of rebooting everytime I want to change the configuration would be quite annoying.
So I am considering different options:

- Official USB upgrade. I discovered that Tipro offers different controllers. Can someone tell me if they are bacward compatible with the MID series?

Image

- Teensy USB upgrade: Since the matrix board and the controller are separate units, I would assume that they communicate using some kind of serial interface. So my idea would be to replace the Tipro controller with a teensy configured as HID and programmed to read the keyboard inputs on this serial interface and convert them to the keystrokes I programmed. But that means I would need to know what protocol they actually use, and if it's not standard, hope that someone already implemented a library I could use. if someone has any intel on this, let me know ;)


- Custom teensy controller: If none of those are doable, I would strip off the matrix board and keep only the populated plate, and cut it down to size, then handwire it. Actually i already stripped an old 128 matrix and was waiting to put it to good use.

If you have further ideas, or had to solve a similar problem, I would be glad to hear about it.

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Myoth

05 Jan 2019, 22:15

Is that a bipper on the official controller ? That'd be pretty cool :D

katamari

06 Jan 2019, 13:59

Yep, looks like it. Actually the older PS/2 only controllers that equip my board also have it. You can actually programm the keys to bip on keypress.

Lanrefni

06 Jan 2019, 14:07

If you don't want to maintain a second system to program a Tipro board you can grab a copy of 32 bit Win 10,then use WinToUsb to make a bootable USB3.0 drive,then just boot into that drive and program the board. It's a bit of a pain in the butt but it works.

katamari

06 Jan 2019, 15:02

That sounds easy enough. Is it possible to get a 32b copy with my 64 license, and use them both with that one license?

Lanrefni

06 Jan 2019, 15:14

katamari wrote: That sounds easy enough. Is it possible to get a 32b copy with my 64 license, and use them both with that one license?
Licenses are per computer,so it shouldn't be much of an issue,plus if it doesn't authenticate you just lose the ability to set a wallpaper while you program the board.

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kbdfr
The Tiproman

08 Jan 2019, 16:50

According to an old thread by CeeSA, controllers for both Tipro lines of products are (or at least were at the time) compatible:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=543
Not sure whether also applies to USB controllers, though.

But even then, you will not be able to simply replace them because physically they are totally different.

Other than that I may still have a USB controller for MID boards, but won't be able to take a look in something like 2 weeks.

katamari

09 Jan 2019, 12:11

Tiproman to the rescue :D
Thanks for the info. As for the form factor, the board seems to have about the same footprint, and it's just the connectors that differ. TBH I don't mind very much cutting into the housing of the board and printing a new panel.

Though I would appreciate if you could test it first. I'll be waiting for your feedbaxk on the compatiblity. And would also appreciate if you could tell me where I could purchase such a controller (i'm based in France). :)

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kbdfr
The Tiproman

09 Jan 2019, 13:08

katamari wrote:
09 Jan 2019, 12:11
[…] As for the form factor, the board seems to have about the same footprint, and it's just the connectors that differ.
Do not rely on this because their innards are completely different, I’m not even sure there’s enough room in the MID keyboard to accommodate the KMX controller.
Though I would appreciate if you could test it first. I'll be waiting for your feedbaxk on the compatiblity. And would also appreciate if you could tell me where I could purchase such a controller (i'm based in France). :)
My last sentence was not about testing compatibility, but about checking if I myself still have a USB controller directly fitting your MID keyboard and which I then could sell to you :mrgreen:
By the way, MID keyboards manufactured prior to (if I remember correctly) 2003 will not work with USB at all. Please check (first 4 digits of the serial no.).

katamari

12 Jan 2019, 13:51

Oh! would be great if you could sell me one ;)

I just checked my boards, the one I intend to use is from 2008, so shouldn't be a problem! :)

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