arduino photos on Flickr

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Macro Monday: www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/10/07/macro-monday-a-series-of...

Arduino Home Automation by Johannes H. Jensen

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Using an Arduino and small servo to periodically turn on the fan on our bathroom.

Arduino "presses any key" on a USB keyboard by s p e x

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UPDATE (11/2013) By now, the Arduino Leonardo and many other ATMega32u4 based clones are widely available. When loaded with the Leonardo bootloader they identify themselves as a USB keyboard/mouse. You can easily access these features using the provided libraries: arduino.cc/en/Reference/MouseKeyboard

UPDATE (2/13/2012): Spark Fun publishes a tutorial for an Arduino keyboard. OK, so they cheat a little by using a variant of the ATmega chip, but it is inexpensive and works with the Arduino software, so I think I'll have to give it a try.

UPDATE: Apparently new Arduinos are being release very soon which already include the ability to mimic a keyboard or mouse out of the box! Check out the official announcement!

UPDATE: Another Arduino/USB keyboard project just appeared I wonder if it can be generalized to any ATMega328.

UPDATE: check this out us.cactii.net/~bb/morsekey/ looks like it could be another method for turning any arduino into a usb keyboard!

Tired of waiting to find out how to program Arduino Uno to pretend that it's a keyboard?

I am.

I needed a way to interrupt a PC during boot to get to the BIOS from a remote location. In this case the BIOS works well enough over a serial port, but you can only get there by pushing a real key on a real keyboard in person. Who wants to go down to the lab every time you need to push a button!?

So I looked into recycling an old keyboard for the job: Instructables, Hacking a USB Keyboard

That's a nice enough explanation, but doesn't really get me to writing a program to press keys, never-mind let me press a key via SSH. Although it did show me how to figure out which two wires I need to connect to "press" DEL.

So I figured, I'd try a FET as switch. I started with an MPF-102 FET, but that didn't work very well. Frankly, I'm wondering what an MPF-102 is actually good at. Nothing I've found so far.

Having failed with a transistor, I tried a proper relay. That worked well but then I wondered: What would happen if I just used the suggested PN2222 transistor without the relay? And that just worked. Yay!

Then I added a MAX-232 chip which doubled as a non-USB method for programming the Arduino (an FTDI cable costs $20!, MAX232 is $1.20 or so, plus capacitors) and the lab has digi console servers which let me talk to RS232 via SSH/telnet. That's how I was talking to the console on the PC anyway.

I "stole" the wiring for the MAX232 from the Freeduino Serial.

And pressing the key is as simple as a digitalwrite HIGH for .1 seconds. I simplified one of the stock serial examples to make it interactive, and I soldered some wires to a DB-9 connector (as per the Freeduino schematic).

And it worked! Although, OSX wasn't very helpful. Every time I plugged int the keyboard to test it, it asked me to help it identify why kind of keyboard it was. And then I ran into a feedback loop when I told it to send DEL whenever it got a single character. Turns out DEL is 3 or 4 characters which each tried to send a DEL, and you get the picture.

I deployed it today, and it works perfectly! Then I see this link on Make's blog: MAKE Video audition: Google Reader pedal But *whew*, its OK. They are also only adding a different mechanical switch to a keyboard's guts, not giving you programatic control over the keyboard.

With some shift registers and a bunch of transistors, I could control the whole keyboard with no special software/drivers. In fact, it would work without the target computer ever realizing that it is being remotely operated!

IMG00083-20101025-1512

PS Yes, my wiring could've been neater/cleaner, but I was trying to get something working relatively quickly. I'm very pleased with the functionality, although the appearance is admittedly sub-par.

Arduino by Laura Barrio

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Arduino 101 Class by Fabrice Florin

Our third Arduino 101 class at Tam Makers went really well. I taught this evening course with co-instructor Donald Day on Thursdays, from June 16 to 30, 2016, at the woodshop in Tam High School in Mill Valley.

We worked with an enthusiastic group of seven students, including adults with diverse backgrounds, as well as a couple high school students. Our partner Geo Monley worked both as a mentor and as a student during the hands-on sessions.

We started the class at 6pm, by giving students an overview of how circuits work. We then learned how to use a multimeter, how to solder electronics, and how to control rainbow-colored NeoPixel lights.

Students seemed to really enjoy this class and told us they learned a lot from it. Several expressed an interest in taking intermediate and advanced classes in the future. This is one of our first maker courses at Tam Makers, and we’re really happy that it is going so well; we look forward to teaching more classes in the fall.

View more photos of this Arduino course:

www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/albums/72157659914570948

Learn more about this Arduino 101 class:

www.tammakers.org/arduino-101/

Read our Arduino 101 Guide:

bit.ly/arduino-101-guide-june-2016

Check out our course slides:

bit.ly/arduino-101-slides-june-2016

Learn more about Tam Makers:

www.tammakers.org/

Arduino LCD hacking by Matt Biddulph

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