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USB Keyboard Emulator
Updated 8/21/2006:
I made a layout.
Updated 5/19/2006:
An 18F2550 microcontroller is used for all functions. It has onboard USB capabilities, in hardware. The 18F
series of USB PICs has internal data EEPROM as opposed to the 16C series, which has none. The EEPROM stores
the keypresses you want the PIC to "type". The data EEPROM can be programmed via a Windows program I wrote.
The program uploads a configuration text file to the PIC. The keystroke sequences can be changed this way.
The device can be used for anything, really. For example, if you wanted to automate the process of formatting
a floppy disk, you could create a configuration file that would hit the windows key, arrow key up to Run, type
'cmd' and hit enter, wait one second, then type format a:, etc. There's a limit of 128 keystrokes, due to the
use of the internal EEPROM (256 bytes, 2 bytes per keystroke). One modifier (shift, ctrl,etc.) can be pressed
along with each keystroke. If external memory was used this could be implemented easily, without crippling the
number of keystrokes heavily.