simulating chorded keyboards

[Paul Beaudet]

Okay I have already put in a lot of pain in suffering over wanting to do
David's son wants to do
 so I feel obligated to divulge more.

Typically usb and laptop keyboards will likely fail to meet his needs

USB hid can only report 6 keys at a time and some modifiers, which would be
fine for most chorded applications
except for the fact that, the keyboards that any given one of us has likely
fails to report more than
3 keys at one time depending on which keys are being chorded.
(not the like the convenient keys to decent hand placement). PS/2 "COULD"
handle more without hacks
 but, who has a native PS/2 port on their machines now and days?
Like mentioned before to over come this you will need an "NKRO" ( N key
roll-over) or
Keyboard that is designed properly as opposed to the cheap stuff that most
of us have. These can
be anywhere between $40-$400 (yes, people do buy mech keyboards for that
much).
Though you might be able to find a cheaper old PS/2 that is -> IBM spec <-
that is suitable,
then use a usb converter or something like this -
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1136
and then use a leonardo or mircro to pipe over the keys as an emulated
keyboard. Easy code.
I also rebuilt some firmware to have the arduino do the conversion wiring
ps2 to it directly,
but its kinda unreliable, so I recommend the converter....
Even at that point I think building the layout on the Arduino might be the
way to go.
Mainly because of the effort in programming around the 6 key limit.
Yes people have done it by having one device report as multiple keyboards.
If this is the way David wants to go, providing a helping hand.
Configuring the TKM firmware with a teensy would be the way to go.
A lot of good stuff has been build in teensy land, not for the faint of
heart though.

Unfortunately this as much of a hardware challenge as is finding software
that might make
it a tackleable for David's son to make his own layout. The Arduino
suggestion may seem like
 the hard road for young person who might less keen on C programming, but
if you really want
it, you do what you got to do. Good chance to hook him into a valuable
skill young, wish I found
my hook into the programming world along time ago. My lack of experience is
a real bane to my
efforts now.
 The arduino leo was actually what I found to be the most simple approach
based on what I
had available to me and my complete inability to program at the time I
started the jesterType project.

The chorded keyer was second to blinking the LED for me... little bit of a
leap, but I think we
just established the learning experience is important [?]
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