Grubby Paws' shematic for his DIY Copy/Paste version of........... "switches in a box."
 
This should open as a new page.  I decided I needed more room to describe what is happening.  I'll also keep the page in plain white background for better viewing of all that is being described.
 
At the beginning, I neglected to disclose why I was driven to this idea of building a separate copy/paste key set-up.   I had a great "hotkey" program that allowed me to assign a single key for copy and paste.  But I found I could NOT copy from one program like NotePad....into certain other ones like Excel.  Now as you may know....when copy/pasting to another program you often have to click once on the program anyway---to get it to activate and be ready for the paste.  But as I have said----it didn't work that way for the hotkey program I had.  There was just no paste function when it came to these certain other programs.  I'm not sure why the hotkeys failed in this way.  But that is why I opted to build this.  It basically uses contacts that would have normally been pushed by keys.  It should act like any time you use the keys to copy from one program into another.  So far it has worked very well and I use it all the time.  My plunger idea isn't the best though.  The problems I have is with an occasional jamming of the plunger and pasting going wild;-)  But that is all design flaw---and nothing to do with the concept.  Below is what I did for my own situation..... 
 
schematic.jpg (44953 bytes)
 
This would be looking down at the switches----as when the plungers come down to supress the part of the body where the levers are showing as coming out from underneath.  There is a "bonding" bolt that bolts each set together.  Then there is the pivot bolt that they pivot on when the plunger comes down to push the part of the body that is towards the top in the picture.....and in doing so close the lever and it's contacts.

Here's the deal on the schematic above and what it shows.  The chip is on the left and the images on the right represent the two sets of switches bolted together and their levers showing from underneath and their contacts on the top.  I also forgot to mention, waaaay back at the beginning,  that it takes some skills to trace out the printed circuit on the sheets of plastic that are in the keyboard that you start with.  It's VERY hard for the eyes to follow.  So be sure that you put a meter to it when you think you finally know where things lead and check them for continuity.  I will also mention that all of the printed lines have a certain amount of resistance.  I was going to add resistors to the circuit to simulate the resistance in the lines, but decided not to bother.  So far it hasn't seemed to matter.  But it's something someone else may want to consider.
 
I had 5 contacts that I figured I needed on the chipboard.  In my pictures you will see that there were were two sets of 14 contacts on the chip board.  I was dealing with the end set and counting from the center out as 1-2-3....
Between the keyboard circuit sheet and the chip board itself I identified this pattern.....
 
#10 was a common point (Orange in the schematic) to Ctrl, C. V and X so I figured it to be the common feed they all needed.  Then I only used Ctrl and C and V for copy/paste.  X would have been for "cut" but I opted not to use it.  It would have required a third button.  I wanted just two.  So I only used 4 of the 5 contacts I made..
#3 was for C (Green in the schematic)
#4 was for V (Blue in the schematic)
#5 was for X
#8 was for Ctrl (Pink in the schematic)
 
You'll see that orange feed wire, #10, feeds all the center contacts.  I was dealing with the center contacts and the upper contacts showing at the top.  These were Normally Opened (NO) contacts that closed when the levers were pushed down.  The center contacts, to the unused contacts, were Normally Closed (NC) and of course opened when the levers were depressed. 
 
So ok---we are back to working with the center and top contacts in the picture.  Remember that the levers to the left were on the higher parts of the box so would be first to close.  For this reason the Ctrl  (#8) was attached to each set on the left.  This means that when either set was pushed down---the left lever would close and send the Ctrl pulse first.  It of course stays closed as the plunger is pushing down to close the right side of the assembly.  These lead respectively to the C and the V being activated. 
 
So I hope that is clear.  You're own board contacts may be entirely different on whatever you used for a keyboard chip.  DON'T GO BY MY CONTACT POINTS AND NUMBERS! TRACE YOUR OWN BOARD AND CHIP OUT!!!Also this chip came from a keyboard with lots of other shortcut keys.  So I think a plain keyboard might have a smaller chip.  I suspect the other set of 14 contacts may be for the optional shortcut keys.
 
So I do hope this helps someone do something similar. Maybe I'm not the first to do this......but I searched really hard to find someone else that had done it.  There certainly seemed to be nothing posted about it----hence my desire to share my excitement over something that is really useful to me---and must be to others. 
 
Thanks for stopping by ;-)
 
If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me. The address is at the bottom of the Parent page this came from. To get back simply.....
 
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