KENBAKless

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Mark Wilson

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Jul 2, 2021, 12:03:37 AM7/2/21
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You may recall I posted about my KENBAKlite in 2019, where I tried replacing all the switches and LEDs with an LCD touch screen:

lite.jpg

While working on that I also thought about an alternative simplification: use physical switches and LEDs but aggregate them.

Over some recent rainy Winter weekends I created a not-very-pretty proof of concept. KENBAKless uses a 4x4 push-button matrix "keyboard" and two NeoPixel strips (all squeezed onto a shield):

bare.jpg

With some crappy paper labels:

label.jpg


A downside is you lose the physical alignment of the buttons and LEDs.

On the upside, I implemented an Octal mode for entry, for example pressing 0, 3 and 2 sets the display to 032 (0b00011010), rather than 0b00001101.

There's one extra button, I called it "sys".  It’s used to set LED brightness, colour and Binary/Octal input mode.  There are extra LEDs, I use one to indicate Octal.

A short video: YouTube

I'm done, I’ve scratched that itch, now I can move on :-)

famousd...@gmail.com

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Jul 2, 2021, 10:29:48 AM7/2/21
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Very cool!  I wonder if John Blankenbaker has any clue that people are still getting enjoyment out of his creation from 50 years ago.

mgas1237

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Jul 2, 2021, 7:51:03 PM7/2/21
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Nice! How about a sketch? Board file?

Scott

Mark Wilson

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Jul 2, 2021, 8:09:33 PM7/2/21
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Sure, the sketch zip is on hackaday and attached. No board file, but the schematic is in PINS.h
Not much to it of course, which was the whole point, just a lightly modified blank shield, the keyboard matrix (with its header strip modded) and two conjoined NeoPixel strips
DSC05244.JPG
Kenbakless.zip

Mark Wilson

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Jul 2, 2021, 9:42:55 PM7/2/21
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More photos on flickr

mgas1237

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Jul 3, 2021, 3:39:30 PM7/3/21
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What fun! Thank you Mark for sharing. I'm having a ball with the nanoKENBAK I got from Chris. I'm testing its durability and am worried about wearing it out ;) I ordered the parts for your 'Less' and I've started a few other 'replicas' based on your code. I even have a small replica case ready for me to fire up the 3D printer but I haven't used it in a few years so that will be another rabbit hole project on its own. I'm hoping Chris comes with the metal case before I get there. I'll share some photos when I get more work done.

Thanks again to BOTH of you for your work on these projects :)

Scott

mgas1237

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Jul 4, 2021, 3:39:18 PM7/4/21
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Mark, I tried KENBAKlite and got an error for SoftwareI2C missing. I tried finding libraries online but struggled a bit with which one to use. There were many with slightly different names. I installed a few but no luck. I get past the error now but just get a white screen. I'm not an Arduino Guru but manage to stumble thru. Can you give me a link to the library you used for this?

I went thru some online demos using the Adafruit libraries and confirmed the screen is working on my Uno. I know you said you were done with this project somewhere but I appreciate any help you can give me.

Scott

Mark Wilson

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Jul 4, 2021, 3:50:52 PM7/4/21
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I'm at work now so can't confirm, but probably this https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Arduino_Software_I2C
But try using the library manager in the Arduino IDE, it's simpler.
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