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.....
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.....
Click here to return to the Parent page this came from, if you have arrived without having gone through it. For those that opened this page from
the Parent page to start with....simple close it and the Parent page will still be below
this.
|