deskthority

Hello all. This is my first post after haunting the forums from the land of "guest." I have 2 projects that I'm going to be pursuing rather avidly. The first one to tackle might hopefully excite some people, so here goes.

I'm building a pip-boy 3000, but not. It's going to be very art-nouveau in style, constructed almost entirely from copper and leather, and will be mounting an HTC One M8 as its interface. Built into the internals will be a microcontroller to allow for some programmed controls being generated from one of several buttons. I came across this forum because the best solution seems to be using keyswitches running through a microcontroller. One key combination will convert it from just a set of macros to a chorded keyboard in order to maximize their function.

My problem here is that I'm not sure how to get a microcontroller to process commands from a set of 5 or 6 keyswitches and pass them on to a cell phone. Can anybody point me in the right direction for that?

Problem 2 on just this project involves a chorded keyboard that uses a 30 character non-standard keyset for a language I'm constructing from scratch. I haven't figured out the mechanics of how this would work, and would love some feedback on how to go about what is needed to construct chording for 30 characters.

Problem 3 might need me to just go through a different forum entirely, so if nobody has any input, that's okay. I'm trying to figure out how to run both a microcontroller and a usb battery bank through the same usb port.

I still haven't figured out which keys to choose for this (though those cherry rk switches look pretty significantly awesome), or if a standard keyboard keyswitch would be optimal, but I'm definitely thinking that mechanical tactile-click switches are the way to go. Suggestions regarding this are appreciated as well.

So, there you have it. Hello world!

Welcome and slow down!
Try to describe your project in greater detail, esp the parts where you need help with!
To start off, for 5-6 (for 30 characters 5 are enough) switches, you can connect them straight up to inputs of your favorite uC and read them, and use a lookup table to determine which code to send to the phone. Using an Arduino (Pro Micro is a good one for this application - native USB) will open you up to a vast community that can help you, and enough code snippets to do almost anything!
Determining which character to send with what chord is something you will have to figure out for your particular application. You can take a look at the various stenograph projects, but I guess you will go through a lot of iterations to get to a result you like!
As for #3, do you mean connecting the keyboard and an external powerbank to the same USB port of the phone to extend it battery life? If so, I think a custom cable is all you'll need!