USB Easy Button

Those Easy Buttons from Staples are awesome, but they have one small flaw: they don't actually do anything useful. It's my aim to change that.

I'm going to build a USB Easy Button. I found most everything I needed from jro's project and a flickr photoset by tommybear. Plus, I've been dying to try one of these U-HIDs. I also describe this process on my blog.

What you'll need:

• An Easy Button (or Boton Facil if it suits you better) $4.99
• A U-HID Nano and USB Cable (with shipping) $42.00
• A Modular Harness for the U-HID (optional) $9.00
• Soldering iron & solder
• Wire (if you didn't buy the wiring harness)
• Dremel or a chisel
• Hot glue or silicone
• Small phillips screwdriver
• PC running Windows XP

Step 1: Program your U-HID Nano

Plug the USB cable and wiring harness (if you're using it) into the U-HID Nano. If you're going to have the button send a single command like me, just leave the black (ground) wire and the gray (pin 10) wire long enough to reach the PCB. We won't be using the other 7. If you want to use the button to close more than one switch at a time (for example, to send Ctrl + Alt + Del), leave one wire per button, plus the ground wire.

I hooked the wires up to a temporary switch at this point for programming the thing. You could go ahead and hook it up to the Easy Button. Just scan down a little to see which contacts to use.

You program the U-HID Nano with U-Config, a software package available from the manufacturer. It's a pretty easy process, and the Technical Manual was easy to read.

I'm not going to go into the details here except to note that a driver install and firmware update were required to get it working on my machine. Both of those processes are clearly documented on their site. I set it up so that when pin 10 goes to ground, it will send the macro "L Alt, F8". It seems to send the scancodes fast enough that my machine counts it as a combination keypress.

Comments

[crc09]

Could this instructable be re-worked for this? http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/KP-22/12-BUTTON-KEYPAD//1.html

[powerfulmojo]

That would be tough: the U-HID nano can only send 8 codes, so you would have to pick your favorite 8 keys. But you could get a regular U-HID (http://www.u-hid.com/home/overview_board.php) and have plenty of keys available.