2015-08-13 (Th) Wrist Mounted Chording Keyboard

Salvaged 8-wire ethernet cord had been used for the ends when building the keyboard and attaching the first controller, an Arduino Mini Pro, but direction changed and an Arduino Micro was chosen. Instead of desoldering the cord, which had a good end, a segment of the cord was cut and a new end was crimped on the cord. RJ45 connections follow a standard which was copied from the previous end. In order to test the connection a second end was crimped onto the cord to effectively make a short patch cord. A portable tester confirmed the cord was good.
Jarkob's Instructable for crimping RJ45 ends

Aligning wires and checking order

Tiny patch cable in tester

Each half of the patch cable was useful as a stub. Only one was needed and a short length was decided upon. After seeing the tangle of wires on the first version a much neater approach was used which resulted in a unit, shown at the bottom of the picture, which looked sleeker than the previous version. Wires trimmed to the necessary length and the cable was kept short. A program was written to confirm that all the connections were good. The keyboard was used to confirm that all connections were made successfully.

Original Mini Pro on top and Micro with freshly crimped end at the bottom



Arduino digital input testing program

To do:
  • Wire Arduino Micro with RJ45 end
  • Program Arduino Micro to act as wired keyboard
  • Add SoftwareSerial port to Micro to send ASCII data to Bluefruit.
  • Use the  SoftwareSerial port to "type" data to the USB keyboard.
  • Route incoming data to Bluefruit as well.
  • Modify servos for continuous rotation.
  • Automate wrist mount.
  • Make model and OpenSCAD code public
  • Write keyboard code

The rest of the posts for this project have been arranged by date.

First time here?

Completed projects from year 1.
Completed projects from year 2



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2015-08-12 (W)

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