Alphabetic data entry for Stamp/Propeller

Deskguy

Like most people, I have a 'crazy notion' about a project I want to do [noparse]:)[/noparse]

I'm looking for ideas of how to do 'relatively easy' data entry on a stamp or propeller - hopefully self-contained. The ideal situation would be a small project box, with the board inside, and LCD on the top for output, but then the question is how to 'type' the letters in.

If I abandoned the small-self contained aspect, I could use the keyboard with the propeller demo board, but it certainly would be nice to keep it self-contained.

I have thought about the 4x4 matrix keypad, but that is also not ideal since entering characters would be a bit of a pain. I'm not looking to type in War and Peace, but one could assume that it might be 100 characters at a time. I did debate for a moment about some switches with the LCD - hold the switch until the correct letter appears in the LCD, but that would also be painfully slow. Could be 3 push-buttons - 1 to advance the letter, 1 to decrease the letter, and 1 to enter the letter. Of course, during the data entry process, the 'black box' will be nowhere near a computer of any sort.

At this point, I have the BOE with BS2 (but likely will use the Propeller since I just finished wiring up my BOE-BOT with lots of sensors and want to work on it separately). I don't have any Propeller stuff yet, but don't mind buying a some since I would like to use it for a few different projects anyways. Thus, assume Propeller if that helps with any ideas.

For testing, I will likely use the keyboard with the Propeller and the LCD, but would like to get the project as small as possible.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might have.

Best regards,

David

stamptrol

David,

One method which works reasonably well on my Garmin GPS is to show a screen of all the letters and then select the desired one by moving the cursor then hitting an <enter> button.

Several short rows (say 4, in order to use a 4 x 20 display) with 7 or 8 characters each will give you the whole alphabet plus a few punctuation chars. Maybe use only 3 rows so the assembed sentence can be shown scrolling across the 4th row.

Cheers,

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Tom Sisk

http://www.siskconsult.com
·

Chet

I am trying to use a key board and a 4x20 display as a portable/symple terminal for my "experimenting" / projects. I have not been very successful getting the keyboard to ascii conversion to work. The PC keyboards require only 5 volt and have a data and clock line. I was trying to get some help over on the SX board for the KB->ascii softwware for the SX. I have not managed to get it to work as yet, but will keep trying. My asm language capabilities are nill. I hate to have to use the PC or Laptop just to enter info every time.

Good luck

Chet

Deskguy

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions so far - it has given me some good ideas.

While doing some more research, I came across something which may be old hat to others, but does offer some interesting ideas. It is called the "Bat Keyboard", which would seem to be pretty easy to replicate using a series of buttons. It does provide some ideas of other ways to input data quickly.

Here is a link:

http://www.infogrip.com/product_view.asp?RecordNumber=12

http://www.infogrip.com/docs/BatPCRef.pdf

Best regards,

David