K3NG Keyer for ESP32 and BT keyboards now ready
Mike Lewis
I now have a version of the K3NG CW keyer running on ESP32-WROOM-32 CPU. Small and low cost, these are around $7 each.
This version is based on a 2022 fork of the original K3NG Keyer code so it is not up to date but not much has changed in the last few years. It is a very feature rich keyer project that includes beacon mode, 12 memories and much more. I have enabled a minimum, but useful, feature set by default. If you can compile code you can change features.
I added BT keyboard support for BT Classic (Logitech K380 compact keyboard) and BLE (Rii i8+ mini keyboard). This was done by request to make desktop and tripod microwave ops less cluttered.
All the PS2 keyboard key assignments except SCROLL-LOCK in the K3NG code (as of 2022) are working on BT keyboards provided the BT keyboard has the keys. Compact keyboards are usually missing some keys.
The K3NG Keyer is an Arduino project that supports several CPUs over time. I was able to get everything running except I ran into an issue with BT classic keyboard being discovered but then the connection attempt stalled. I could not remedy the issue readily. I had earlier BT keyboard test programs working under esp-idf framework so I ported the K3NG Keyer code to esp-idf to compile it then both BLE and BT Classic keyboards worked fine there. I improved performance by putting the keyboard and main programs into their own real time operating system (RTOS) tasks that run parallel to each other.
You do not have to compile source code or know anything about programming, Arduino, or esp-idf to use this. With each build I automatically generate binary firmware images that you can use 1 of 2 tools to upload to your compatible CPU board. These are always copied up to the GitHub repository. Instructions on how to upload firmware on in the project Wiki pages.
The project is located here https://github.com/K7MDL2/K3NG_Keyer_ESP32_BT_Keyboard
The GitHub readme page has basic info and links the Wiki pages where more info is found for key assignments, hardware, and how to upload images. Extensive documentation exists on the main K3NG Keyer Github site Wiki pages and there are many other resources online also.
I am headed to AZ for the Microwave Update conference in Tucson and other vacation travel. When I return, I plan to fork the current K3NG keyer repository and then merge my changes in so that I can keep my version up to date with the main repo. I also hope to dig into why BT classic failed to complete connection under Arduino IDE.
Mike Lewis, K7MDL
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