Make a Guitar Hero Kit for your PC

Step 5 Deciphering the Key Matrix

Now that all the pieces are there, we need to figure out which wires go where to get the keys you want on your guitar. The easiest way I know is to open an spreadsheet, get a wire, and start shorting connections on the breakout board until you get some useful key combos.

If you look at the plastic contact sheets from the keypad, you can see it consists of two contacting layers. When testing for connections you should keep one side of your testing wire on a contact from one layer, while probing contacts from the other layer of contact sheet. On mine pins 1-6 were on one sheet, while pins 7-12 were on the other. This made my method of testing something like the following:

1. connect a wire to pin 1
2. set up excel sheet to record results
3. open notepad to test with
4. tap the loose end of the wire on pins 6-12, record results in excel.
5. move first wire end one pin up.
6. repeat steps 4 and 5 for pins 1-6.

If you're lucky enough to get the same keypad I used, you're work here is already done, and you can use the chart below to help in the next step

Comments

[wowee2222]

you can also use a computor game pad (much easier

[carpespasm]

The reason I didn't was because I didn't know if FoF was a mature enough project to support gamepad inputs.

[Arcidias]

joy2key / xpadder anyone?