2023-05-15 (M) Musical Keyboard as Macro Keyboard MacroMusicKB Wireless connectivity

I bought a wireless keyboard (music style) for Rock Band on the Xbox 360. I planned to strip the innards and connect the switches and buttons to a microcontroller. I could make a macro keyboard or put a MIDI synthesizer inside. Once I realized the power these already had, I tried connecting without any hardware hacking. I bought a wireless adapter to make it appear as a gamepad on my Windows laptop.


Connecting with my cheap adapter proved more difficult than expected. The receiver came with a driver disc, but my laptop doesn't have an optical drive, and the few sites I visited said the drivers were unusable anyhow. I looked around, and the best method was to force the computer to use Microsoft's drivers.


Once I installed the drivers, I visited a couple of sites to see how I would read data from the keyboard. The Xbox-standard buttons are self-explanatory since they return a "1" when pressed or a "0" when released. Each keyboard lever activates a single bit of button six's analog value while simultaneously sending an analog value from the joystick. To read each button individually, I must parse the eight bits for buttons six and seven. I couldn't see where the remaining keys were displayed, but sixteen buttons should be enough for starters.


Ultimately, I want to make this a wearable macro keyboard and possibly integrate a single-board computer. A wearable display might be the best option since I would look like some cyborg musician from the future. Who doesn't want that?

Keyboard feedback

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
Completed projects from year 3
Completed projects from year 4
Completed projects from year 5
Completed projects from year 6
Completed projects from year 7

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2021-05-29

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