[simpits-tech] Small CRTs (Was: Just a quick update.........)

[dabigboy at cox.net]

---- Cris Harrison <phoenixcomm at gmail.com> wrote: 
> >
> ok your not thinking...
> 1. how are you going to debug this beast.. with out the pc's keyboard?
> 2. arduio(s) are cheep!
> 3. If you hackerize a old keyboard.. the ps2 is better as you dont have 
> to buy the USB Shield!!
> 4. also this way you are dealing with your program no system calls!!
> 5. since its a ps2 keyboard on the arduino you can work on two fronts at 
> once..
> a. you can plug in a regular ps2 keyboard to make shure your software is 
> right.
> b. you can double check your hackerize keyboard incase of a misswire..
> Cris

Well, I'm not worried about wiring that much, in fact I technically don't even have to *care* what button goes to what key assignment, so long as each Tracor button is wired to a valid row/column assignment on the PS/2 board (some combinations are unused and yield no keystroke). From there I just press each button on the Tracor and see what keystroke results, and program my FMS app accordingly.

Remember the games where you select a game function and press whatever key you want for that function/command? I actually already wrote my own code to do exactly that for a game I made years ago....while I obviously won't be implementing this code into the CDU, the concept is simple enough, and is something I'm familiar with. 

Nearly all of my dev work on the sim is done from just one Linux PC, which is connected over the net to the other machines (Samba fileshares for deploying code, and SSH for whatever minor tweaks or local commands are needed per PC), so I shouldn't ever need to even hook a regular keyboard into the CDU. But if I do, I can just use a USB keyboard.

Matt