Synergy for the Propeller - Share your PC's mice and keyboard

Chris Merck

I have proposed a little project and want to gauge interest.

This would allow you to use your main PC's mouse and keyboard to control your propeller microcontroller using the popular and open-source Synergy software.

Here's how it works: On your main desktop PC you run a Synergy server which shares your mouse/kbd with any number of Synergy clients. You normally run Synergy clients on other PCs, but for the propeller you instead run a special synergy client which acts like just another client PC, but is running on the server PC. It talks to the propeller over serial (or serial-over-USB). The propeller then decodes the communication and interfaces with software there via hacked keyboard/mice objects (which are drop-in replacements for the standard ones!). Note that the propeller doesn't need to speak TCP/IP or any nonsense like that, it just needs to accept simple serial packets from the hacked synergy client on the PC which does all the dirty work for it.

The great advantage here is, no need for a second mouse/keyboard on your desk for the propeller (if you are not using the serial port for anything else that is). It could be a great aid during development to be able to mouse-over to your propeller environment. You could even copy-paste between them with ease.

If there is any interest I will write the hacked synergy client and propeller objects, it should be pretty straight forward to do.

(i will maintain network transparency and portability if at all possible)

> Chris

Shane De Catania

G'day Chris,
That sounds like a great idea! I use Synergy with my PC's now and it would be great to move the mouse across 2 PC's and onto the propeller VGA display. Definitely put me on the list of interested people
Cheers,
Shane

Graham Stabler

Chris, it sounds like a great idea.

You might also like to check out prop terminal, it emulates the mouse, keyboard and TV display on your PC via the usb programming interface:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=649540

RinksCustoms

The prop terminal works well, and you can configure the screen size by modifying "rows" and "cols" in the .ini file. When the focus is on the prop terminal, all keyboard inputs get placed into a kb buffer and you can recall current mouse movements at any time. In it's default resolution, 13rows x 40columns, it can update the window via usb prop plug/clip as fast as 50ms, 10ms if it only has to update a quarter of the screen, maybe faster if it has to update just alittle part of the screen. Though it's only a beta version, it's very stable and easy to use.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Definetly a E³ (Electronics Engineer Extrodinare!)
"I laugh in the face of imposible,... not because i know it all, ... but because I don't know well enough!"

sharpie

Chris, I vote a huge yes for this one.. I use synergy on most of my machines and would love to see it work across my prop devices too..

Chris Merck

I have made incremental progress on Synergy for the Prop, but it is slow going with the Synergy sources... I cannot seem to find the protocol spec anywhere, and the sources are overcomplicated imho. Soon I hope to have the Synergy hack done and can focus on integrating the Prop side.

Graham, thanks for the link to PropTerminal. It would make sense to use the same Propeller-side code.

I will keep you updated on any progress.