Constructing a 1-Key Keyboard

Overview

The need for an interaction designer to make cheap, quick, and dirty prototypes is the basis of building this 1-key keyboard as the easiest way to interface a single switch to a computer.

Explanation

A keyboard hack is created by this project that is smaller, cheaper, and better reproducible than what one would get when hacking a keyboard circuit. The device features an on- and 0ff-events that are translated to keystrokes of a virtual keyboard. A common way of quickly prototyping physical actions is to assign actions to certain key presses on a keyboard when creating a quick screen-based demo such as Adobe Flash. Physical hacks to the circuit board from a keyboard are also often used to interface custom buttons and switches with a computer in more advanced prototypes.

Having a different key being sent to the computer for a key-down and key-up event was implemented to maximize the functionality of the 1-key keyboard. This can be useful in creating prototypes that has to detect whether a physical object is pushing down a switch or not. To emulate a standard USB keyboard using an Atmel AVR microcontroller, the project implements V-USB from Objective Development.