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Desk-top Tutor Keyboard

Posted: Sat 01 Apr , 2017 20:37 pm
by madebymccoy
Hi

I'm wanting to use one of the (physical) milling tutor keyboards with LinuxCNC...

First question, what is the pinout of the serial port/DB25? Does it emulate a keyboard etc or some other type of serial device etc? From what I understand the pinout is straight, and then a regular DB25-DB9 adaptor can be used.

Second, depending on the first, how does it interface/communicate?

Third, are there any wiring diagrams or circuit diagrams?

Worst case I'll just hack the PCB and use a keypad matrix IO board, but best case all the electronics are there and it's just writing some code for the Linux machine to read the inputs via serial...

Thanks!

Re: Desk-top Tutor Keyboard

Posted: Sat 01 Apr , 2017 23:07 pm
by TDIPower
From my experience with the tutor board, it is just RS232 TX/RX/GND. On a PC running XP and controlling my Starturn 5 through a DOS window (NOT DOSBOX) the PC will shut down the monitor/HDD even when I'm using it as it is not seen as a HID (Human Interface Device).

The tutor keyboard is a horrible thing to use, at some point in time I think I will replace the keypad with a set of proper keys.
If you remember the quality or the ZX81 keyboard and the joys of using one of those that is what you will face


Pete

Re: Desk-top Tutor Keyboard

Posted: Sun 02 Apr , 2017 19:02 pm
by madebymccoy
Haha, thanks Pete - a thumbs up for the keyboard then ;)

I'll hook it up to an Arduino to start with then, and just read the output data... Nicely, there's a very lazy USB HID library for Arduino (Keyboard), so worst case I can use it to read the data from the serial port and spit it out as a key command over USB. Best case, it's a nicely formatted data stream already!