Kenny Friedman, Week 09

Input Week

This week, the goal was to create an input device.

In Lines

My long term goal is to create a digital computer with mechnical inputs and mechincal outputs. See my final project for mechinal ouputs. For inputs, this is the week to start.

I'm going to digitize a typewriter, by creating a board that can read whether a key is pressed or not. To do that, I used an ATTiny44, and created a 6 pin breakout piece to wire things to the typewriter.

It took two tries to do the board with EAGLE. Even though I imported the design rules, the autorouter traced too closely, and traces merged together during milling. The second time, I manually moved traces further away.

The code was pretty straightforward, it uses the 6 pins that leave the board, and is able to read a digital in, whether it's high (VCC) or low (ground). It then prints the result through serial communcation to the computer connected via FTDI.

In Board Photos