Hardware confirmation/advice. Amstrad E2 Keyboard. Cerbuino Bee

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1

So, I got me Bee & I’ve done alot of reading but would just like someone to confirm my thinking as I don’t trust the internet or myself, lol.

I want to use the keyboard below with my Bee as the keypad/control of bluetooth & wireless devices eventually. To start I’m hoping to make a deployment so it will just write the keypresses to file.

Here, I have it’s pinouts: http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/emailer/e2_pinouts.txt

Here is a picture: http://secure.key-electronics.co.uk/mailboard.jpg

From what I understand;

Hardware;

  1. Connect GND accordingly.
  2. Connect Data & Clock to 2 Digital pins & note. (D12, D13)
  3. Connect the last wire to the 3.3V pin.

Software;

  1. Create driver for PS/2 protocal. Similar to: http://www.tinyclr.com/codeshare/entry/297 using RLPLite.
  2. Load driver.
  3. Listen for KeyUp event.

It just seems a bit too easy, nothing in my life looks that simple. Can anyone confirm? Any suggestions greatly appreciated, thanks for your time,

2

Anyone worked with custom keyboards?

3

no, no direct experience.

What questions do you have? (BTW I can’t get to the image in the link you supplied in your first post, should I be able to?)

4

Sorry for the late reply & thank you for your input.

I can’t seem to find an image now, it was supposed to be of the Amsrtad E2 Em@ ailer pull-out keyboard.

I was just wandering if anyone could confirm my idea is correct & if anyone had any hints on where to begin to make it easier.

Thanks,

5

If a keyboard is PS/2 then it has a standard interface no matter what it may look like.

6

Thank you Gus. From my src it says;

  • Standard PC keyboard protocol with non standard scan codes.
  • When the bus is idle, clock and data lines are high.
  • The data line should be sampled on the rising edge of the clock pulse.
  • Data bytes are transmitted as follows:

I think to have all the information I need, for instance, it’s scan codes & pinouts, I’m just very worried about bricking my Cerb as the keyboard connection is 4 horribly thin wires & I’ve managed to brick just about every Android device I come near. Also, just trying to get a simple standalone LED to work it giving me nightmares too, knocking my confidence even more,