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Best Keyboard Hack tutorial?

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atomikbohm:

I disagree.  I like to tinker / putz and the keyboard hack wasn't that difficult though it was time consuming. Besides there are emulators and front ends that don't accept joysticks but I've yet to see one that won't accept a keyboard.

As I recall when I did my keyboard hack I ...

1) Tear apart your donor Keyboard (PS/2 is better than USB as the USB has a max key stroke limit) and take out the circut board attached to the end of the cord.  Keep the shell as it might come in handy later.
2) Solder a wire to each of the little contacts on the fingerboard being careful not to solder any of the contacts to any of the other contacts.
3) Download either Keyhook or Keyscan from BYOAC's download page (under utilities) and get it working.  Shut down your PC.  
4) Plug the hacked Key Board it into your PC and start your PC.  Get out your multi meter and set it to check for low DC voltage (5vDC if memory serves)  There are basically 2 "banks" on the circuit board a positive and a negative.  Use your meter on each contact to determine which contacts belong to which bank.  I labeled each wire with a piece of tape, Letters for bank 1 and Numbers for bank 2
4)  Launch the app you chose in #3 above and start shorting letters to numbers keeping track of the results in a grid (Letters on 1 axis and numbers of the other) aka a matrix.
5) Take a look at the BYOAC WIKI on Key Board Hacks on how to avoid Key Ghosting & Key Blocking and your good to go.

After soldering in step 2 I cut cut off the part of my keyboard that the circuit board was originally mounted in with a hand saw.  Then I popped off a couple of keys ran the wires out of the holes and attached them to a D-sub plug. Then hot glued the plug to the keyboard to prevent accidental yanking out of wires.

All in all it took me a couple of hours mainly cause I only had I extra keyboard and didn't want to mess it up.

If anybody sees any errors or down wright wrongness please point it out.

Good Luck and ...

I take no responsibility to any damage you do to your yourself, pc, keyboard, house, neighborhood, planet or the contents of any of the above.  I don't want some litigation happy idiot making a mistake and ending up with my house.   :cheers:

syph007:

I understand the urge to tinker, but when there are cheap and better alternatives, you really have to gauge how much of your time is worth 25 bucks.

atomikbohm:

For me it was a geek project that I could lose myself in for a while and at the time I didn't have the approval of the CFO (aka my wife).  The hack from beginning to end was like $5 for the D-subs.  I had all of other components in my spare parts bins.  To be honest I still have the cab counting the generic sterns cab I think I was $50 or $60 for the whole project.  I still have some work to do but broke the cardinal cab building rule... "NEVER hook up the PC till after the cab has been finished!!!" It's been like that for going on 2 years now  :-[

mphuie:


--- Quote from: HarumaN on May 27, 2010, 02:45:21 pm ---A cheap USB gamepad would be a better bet.

--- End quote ---

Agreed.  USB gamepads will generally give you at least 12 inputs.  I picked up a few on Amazon for less than $8.

solidteezme:


--- Quote from: Smeghead on May 27, 2010, 03:07:44 pm ---I think when you get into it, you'll wish you had just bought an Ipac

--- End quote ---

Exactly what i did after wasting £20 breaking 3 keyboards,

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