Ok, the palm fold up keyboards (palm portable keyboard) which are black and fold up and above all are VERY VERY SMALL for a nearly full sized keyboard. They are used on the palm III and palm IV hand held computing devices. There are some other version's but the one I'm working with is listed ablove. on the link below the first picture show's what one looks like. palm portable keyboard.
http://www.thinkoutside.com/
These keyboards are VERY nice I'v got one by a generous person who follows these IOPENER threads Hopping I can shead a hack for him.
Now I'v got all the info on the keyboard how it works pinouts software and even keycodes/hexcodes for how the keyboard works. But i saddly dont know how to program. Welp heres the deal, these keyboards are SERIAL interfaced. And to make one of these keyboards fully usful it can be made to work in one of 2 ways. EATHER serial or PS/2. For a PS/2 setup its going to require a pic chip pic16f84 perferably. I'v even got the info on a setup which uses a serial input and a ps/2 output for some other project someone did I found. But this is perfict for this keyboard because converting it wouldnt be hard at all.
Now heres the cool part, These keyboards are minus one MAJOR key. the ESCAPE key but using a pic-chip you can easly just add the key by putting a small button somewhere hooked upto the pic-chip. If anyone can help I'd love to hear from ya.
I can give you all the info needed for creating drivers for theys keyboards for just a serial interface or all the info needed for helping to create a ps/2 interface. AND how to take apart the keyboard with OUT hurting it.
To putit in a NUT shell there are some hidden screws on the keyboard, behind the lable. There are 2 lables, well sort of. There is a true lable on the back and then there is an other thin sheet behind the sliding fold out support stand for the palm. The lable and cover sheet are both VERY THIN METAL!!!! and bend easly, Luckly I found this out befor i bent them. The whole control chip is under a screwd down piece of plastic to the right of the palm connector port. this covering has 2 screws on top and ONE under the thin metal sheet on the bottem. the entire cirict is basesd on one smt controler chip which is very pro-pri. So you won't find any info on it via chipdir. for info on the keyboard go to www.thinkoutside.com
In working mode the keyboard only uses 4 wires from the palm but technicly it uses 5. connector Pin 2 VCC – Input to keyboard (3.0V DC to 5.5V DC), Pin 3 RXD – Output from keyboard, Pin 4 RTS – Input to the keyboard, Pin 7 HotSync – Output from keyboard used for handshaking (NOT NEEDED Only for HOT pluging to a serial port on palm), Pin 10 GROUND.
The keyboard will activate on its own when the power goes high, i.e. turning on a computer with the keyboard plugged in.
The serial version of the mod would require nothing but an almost straight hook up.
The ps/2 vesion of this hack/mod I'm hopping to have created with help may need 2 major chip's, a MAX232 and pic16f84. I'm prity shure it will require both chip's because the output of the keyboard is in RS-232. If it only requires a pic chip for the hack someone could make a mod for the keyboards easly and cheeply, HINT HINT!! AND THE mod on theys keybaords regardless will be universal because the output will be eather serial or ps2. meaning regardless it can be used on a regular pc computer. Also using the pic chip because of the number of spair multi use pins, keyboard lights could be added like caps, and scroll lock. no need for number lock where as there is no number pad on the keyboard, aside from the top row. But we DO gain an FN key which could make us gain lots of good things for the IOPENERS.
The one thing that makes me wonder is that on the schematics for the keyboard it says this.
(SIGNAL LEVELS – Data may be sent at RS-232 levels. The signal level depends on the input voltage supplied by the device.)
If this means that it will do TTL-LOGIC with a low power input of 3.3v then a max chip will not be required on the ps/2 version hack. A max chip is only for signal conversion for thoese whom are wondering what all these terms are. Now the pic-chip i dont believe can handle the conversion if the in-comming data is in the worng format i.e. rs-232.
welp I'v gone and said it lets see what people have to say about this.
