Serial Keyboard Emulator

hesinije

Member
Hi all,

Has anyone ever programmed a serial keyboard emulator into a picaxe?
I like to do the following: send a character to a picaxe (e.g. an 18X) by RS232 communication, then the picaxe converts this character and sends it to a device on the output, for example the serial keyboard input of a PC.
For any information thanks in advance.

Herman, NL
 

andrewpro

New Member
I've toyed with the idea but never actually tried to implement it. Google for "ps/2 keyboard output" should give you an insight into what is required.

I do know this though...the keyboard is what generates to clock for the serial communications with the computer. So youll have to figure out a way to generate the clock and data from the picaxe.
 

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
This may be possible, but communication is not one way between keyboard & computer - it is bi-directional (commands such as 'light the LEDs' are also sent from computer to keyboard).
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
You would probably find it much easier to use a program which runs on the PC to take incoming serial data and poke it into the keyboard buffer. This is really just a variation of an on-screen / virtual PC keyboard application.

You could write your own code to do the job, or maybe even find a pre-written appplication to do it; people with Windows PC based MP3 players in cars usually use similar things, and that's often how hand-held multi-media controllers for PC's work. A Google search should turn up some useful links.
 

hesinije

Member
Thanks for the reply. Off topic: to be more in technical detail, I have a device that outputs data by RS232 if it is asked to do so. Furthermore I have a video text overlay device with only a serial keyboard input to mix text with video. To make it real-time (more or less) I think a picaxe might be an interesting interface for the one way communication between both devices.
 
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