How to 'build' a IR or RF keyboard circuit?

[Jakobud]

Anyone know anything about building a custom RF or IR circuit similar to one used with a wireless keyboard?  I don't want to hack a wireless keyboard because of limitations of keyboards with ghosting etc.  But what I do want to do is make my control panel wireless.  So basically I would plug my keyboard encoder into something that would wirelessly communicate with my PS/2 port of my computer.  Does anyone here have any leads/ideas/links for this sort of direction I am wanting to take?

[Silverwind]

Anyone know anything about building a custom RF or IR circuit similar to one used with a wireless keyboard?  I don't want to hack a wireless keyboard because of limitations of keyboards with ghosting etc.  But what I do want to do is make my control panel wireless.  So basically I would plug my keyboard encoder into something that would wirelessly communicate with my PS/2 port of my computer.  Does anyone here have any leads/ideas/links for this sort of direction I am wanting to take?

sounds ambitious.. I have thought of that before ,but never gave it too much thought as it's probably difficult..

let us know if you find out anything good on the subject..  i'm not even sure what the process is with a standard RF keyboard..  

[WFH]

You could look into hacking a wireless PC gamepad.  Intel makes one.

[Jakobud]

Yeah I suppose I could look into hacking a wireless gamepad, but I REALLY want to have more inputs.  Could this really be this hard?  There's a lot of knowledgeable people on this board.  I would think that someone would have an idea of what direction to head in...

[eightbit]

Yeah I suppose I could look into hacking a wireless gamepad, but I REALLY want to have more inputs.  Could this really be this hard?  There's a lot of knowledgeable people on this board.  I would think that someone would have an idea of what direction to head in...

This seems like a lot of work for very little gain. Being wireless is not going to be easy or cheap. If you hack a keyboard your going to have all the shortfalls of a keyboard hack. You should be able to hack joypads, you would have to find ones that can daisy chain to get more inputs. Thats not going to get expensive.

I would suggest asking yourself why you are doing this and is it going to be worth it?

I have never seen a seperate wireless adapter for keyboards but you might be able to find something.

[Lilwolf]

I would worry about the lag time.  Even at a very fast update, it might not be acceptable for a joystick controller.  Most RF keyboards are used for configuration on a closed hack machine... not for a the joysticks..

but I would like to hear about it.  Would be GREAT for different controllers across the room.

[Mike]

I can tell you that you CAN'T use a remote control for a computer. Reason being is that mame can't handle the key being spoofed. A wireless keyboard is going to be your best bet. It has a lot of keys and is designed to handle rapid input.

[eightbit]

I would worry about the lag time.  Even at a very fast update, it might not be acceptable for a joystick controller.  Most RF keyboards are used for configuration on a closed hack machine... not for a the joysticks..

It should work since they sell wireless joysticks and gamepads. Its going to be expensive to hack those to make them work. Jakobud said he didn't want to hack a keyboard or a gamepad.

I think he's looking for basically a convertor to turn a normal keyboard which in this case is just a keyboard encoder into a wireless device.

[Jakobud]

yes eightbit, that's exactly right.  I want to take a normal ps/2 keyboard (in this case, a keyboard incoder) and connect it to a battery powered IR of RF circuit with some sort of IR/RF transceiver plugged into my ps/2 port...

A cool website I found is called www.epanorama.net.  There's a LOT of valuable information on there about all sorts of electronic stuff.  I posted a question on their message board about this IR/RF circuit but it is not a very active board.

[Darkstalker]

I still think it would be easier just to hack an IR keyboard...

Only problem is, I've only seen one brand, both keyboards I've had broke down on me, and it required 4 AA batteries in the keyboard.  It was a PS/2 receiver though...

[Beley]

What you want to do i probably quite easy in theroy, since the data rate on a keyboard is quite low you could probably get away with just hooking up IR leds (amplified of course)to the clock and data lines, of course the problem with this is that the clock and data signals would get mixed up with eachother and any other light source would play hell with it.
what you would have to do is modulate the signals (555) before they are sent and de-modulate them once recieved, there are 3-pin IR recievers/demodulators that you can buy, buy the clock and data signals would have to operate at different frequencies

[Grasshopper]

It's an interesting idea.

The guy who designed the ButtonBox ( http://surf.to/buttonbox) was planning to add details of an Infra Red version to his website. Unfortunately the site hasn't been updated for some time.

It might be worth sending him an email to see whether he ever built an Intra Red ButtonBox, and if so whether he would consider undating the site.

[Jakobud]

Wow. Well you guys sure seem to know what you are talking about.  But to me it sounds like greek.

I would love to just hack a keyboard, but I really do NOT want to get into all the downfalls a keyboard hack has.  I want to be able to reprogram what button does what...I want the ipac shift function...etc...

I wonder if it would be possible to take a wireless keyboard and open it up and hack a normal keyboard into the IR part of it....anyone know?

[stevej37]

<snip>
I wonder if it would be possible to take a wireless keyboard and open it up and hack a normal keyboard into the IR part of it....anyone know?

After reading your original post, this is the approach I would investigate. I've been meaning to add an RF keyboard to my mame cab so as to avoid dangling a cord through the coin door.

I would lean more towards an RF rather then IR so as to not need line of sight to the receiver. Does RF cause a problem elsewhere?

I'll probably pick one up in the next day or two and be happy to crack it open and see if one could just rob the RF circuit for purposes of attaching to an encoder and post what I find.

I would expect to find 5-6 wires going into an RF circuit seeing as that's what's on the other end of the receiver...a PS/2 mini din.

Steve

[SirPoonga]

i;ve used an RF gamepad, it's ok, but I still didn;t trust it.  Especially if it was hacked.  A keyboard going to be worse.

[Jakobud]

Poonga what do you mean you didn't trust it?  Worried about security issues using an RF device?

I don't think RF would really cause any problems. No more than a normal wireless RF keyboard would...

Stever I think I might try the same thing here soon.  Keep us posted in this thread

[SirPoonga]

I didn't didn't try it out enough to get response.  But I'd think wireless would not have a great response time.

[Beley]

I wonder if it would be possible to take a wireless keyboard and open it up and hack a normal keyboard into the IR part of it....anyone know?

Its possibable that you would find something like that , but its much more likly that when you open it up you would find only one board in there that contains the both the IR and the keyboard circuitry

if you did find one with seperat keyboard and IR/RF circuitry unfortunatly the communication between the two probably wouldnt be standard keyboard protocol.

as someone allready mentioned , your best bet would be to do a normal hack on a IR/RF keyboard