Requirments and over arching design

The main task is to enable the button control on the MFD and joystick to produce a re-programable keystroke event. Virtually any game sold can respond to a keyboard, thus making this system emulate a keyboard allows the system to have instantaneous compatibility with many game systems. The re-programability is handy to quickly convert from one game to another. Making the system open source allows customizability, and open to organic community generated solutions.

I chosen to use an Arduino core as an open source hardware heart of this project. I couldn’t find a Arduino USB keyboard emulator library, but there are open source libraries for a PS/2 keyboard emulator. I chosen to use this library, and convert the PS/2 signal to USB via a dedicated IC.

In creating the Arduino Core, I borrowed heavily from Lady Ada’s work on the USB Boarduino. We will maintain a serial connection (at least after boot-up) to the Arduino with the same serial over USB connection that used in the Duemilanove board. I say “at least after boot-up”, because I will use all the outputs, including the RX, and TX lines for the IO bus.

In my continuity testing, I’ve noticed that the LED output enable pins are tied to one pin on the ribbon cable. This must be accessed individually, so they go through a shift register.