Small dev board with USB HID and a couple of digital IOs

[apelly]

Howdy guys,

Maybe someone has this in their head already and can save me an hour of research:

I have in mind a simple project to map a SPST switch to a keypress on a keyboard.

I seem to remember one of the arduinos has USB HID in the CPU, and I recall this being more versatile than a separate device, but I can't remember why. Something programmable over USB would save me some drama too since I have limited gear on hand for the moment.

I don't really care what device it is, but I'm imagining some Chinese arduino for a fiver

Any thoughts?

[Jeroen3]

Basically any USB capable micro will have an USB HID example project on their demo kit.

[Brutte]

Any HID mice around?

[android]

This is one I designed a while back using a PIC18FK2550 (about $3)...

http://www.instructables.com/id/PUB-Programmable-USB-Button/

You could easily replace the rotary encoder with a SPST switch (but you would lose the programmability feature)

[apelly]

This is one I designed a while back using a PIC18FK2550 (about $3)...

Nice. Looking for a dev board though.

[firehopper]

arduino leonardo or pro micro both use the same chip and can do hid keyboard or mouse.

[apelly]

Thanks firehopper. Just grabbed a pro micro clone from ebay.

[AlxDroidDev]

arduino leonardo or pro micro both use the same chip and can do hid keyboard or mouse.

I was about to suggest the Leonardo too. Great little board, and can do wonders.

[westfw]

Also any of the "Teensy" boards from http://pjrc.com

Last time I actually DID something l iike this, I just ripped the controller out of a "physically damaged but electrically OK" keyboard like most of us have lying around.

[Fred27]

How about the MSP430F5529 LaunchPad?

[Kilrah]

I'd go with the Teensy as well, the USB HID software libraries are simplified so much that you could literally do what you want in about 5 mins.

[apelly]

Thanks guys. Maybe next time.

[firehopper]

Thanks firehopper. Just grabbed a pro micro clone from ebay.

go to sparkfun's leonardo page they give code snippets on how to do exactly what you seem to want.

[apelly]

go to sparkfun's leonardo page they give code snippets on how to do exactly what you seem to want.

Yea. I kind of hate doing that; buy cheap shit then leech off people making an actual contribution.

That's probably what I will do though.

I buy an occasional non-urgent thing from them to make up for it. That doesn't help the arduino guys I suppose. Whoever they are these days. But I'm going to use their environment anyway.

[Brutte]

My favourite dev board is STM32L-Discovery. About $15, debugger is on board.
USB library is the same as for popular STM32F103, lots of examples, not only from ST.
Dev board comes with a 6 x 14-segment LCD and a CR2032 holder footprint at the back (but no holder or battery provided) which is good for field testing, logging etc.

[apelly]

My favourite dev board is STM32L-Discovery. About $15, debugger is on board.

Nice. Good price too.

Overkill for what I'm after though. In my digikey cart is one of the LXP ones. Quite cheap, with integrated debugger too.

[TheDirty]

Digispark will do this and is even simpler than the Teensy and you can e-bay it for cheap.  The examples come with HID Mouse, Keyboard, CDC, ...

[apelly]

VUSB would have been fine. Had I known about it.

Not to worry. I'm sorted now thanks.

[Brutte]

My favourite dev board is STM32L-Discovery. About $15, debugger is on board.

In my digikey cart is one of the LXP ones.

It is NXP. Their uCs are marked with LPCxxxx. The LPC1347 (64k flash+12k sram) is their flag USB device product. It comes on LPCXpresso LPC1347 and it is around $20.
So, if you are a Freescale fan, you can try Kinetis FRDM-KL25Z, also $15, debugger on-board of course. This is a more sophisticated uC and can work as USB device or as USB host.

[apelly]

It is NXP.

Don't know what I was thinking.

So, if you are a Freescale fan, you can try Kinetis FRDM-KL25Z, also $15, debugger on-board of course. This is a more sophisticated uC and can work as USB device or as USB host.

Nice board at a nice price!