A project by Quek Wen Qian, Lee Han Yong Andy, Chan Jian Hao, Gerard Tan for Hack&Roll 2020.
Inspiration
Inspired by Stephen Hawking, there are plenty of great minds amongst those with impaired physical mobility.
What it does
HawkingBoard empowers users who have difficulty using normal keyboards by serving as a minimal-cost, minimal-dexterity, full-featured keyboard that is controlled with 1 point of contact. With just a single touch, this tool equips them with the ability to code or write a book.
How we built it
Fusion of hardware and software.
Hardware:
Circuit + Arduino + C, connected via USB to a PC, which appears as a HID Keyboard Device
GUI:
C# and Winforms to display background keystroke translation for user reference
Bridging:
AHK to translate hardware input into keystrokes
Challenges we ran into
Hardware:
Being new to hardware, circuits and arduino. Damaged diodes and components. Limited hardware equipment. Sensitivity/fragility of components. Solder not attaching to USB connector.
Software:
Being new to AHK. C# unable to detect background keystrokes and having to hook to kernal keypress. Accurately timing keypresses (e.g. key up, key down for different forms of input). Differentiating between different keystrokes. Sending special keys and modifier keys. Integrating different aspects of the project together (e.g. hardware to software).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being our first hackathon, the time pressure was real but we're glad we could complete in time. We also overcame our lack of experience in the tools used and learnt new skills in the process.
What we learnt
Hardware knowledge. GUI. Hooking keystrokes in background. Keystroke manipulation.
What's next for HawkingBoard
AI for predictive text. Text-to-speech. Proper hardware casing.
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