Is there anyone that know how/what signals the "media" keys send on the ps2 port? I was thinking of addding some of these keys to a control panel I'm building and as they seem to be standard these days I thought I could avoid using a scetchy serial sollution. The keyboard I'm using at the moment is an old MS Natural Keyboard so there are no media keys on it. Tried to but I didn't find anything about it.
That shows how the signals go but not what signals I need to send. I guess I will have buy a cheapass media keyboard and hack it up to get the controlller chip from it and then just wire the keys to the chip. However I want to believe there were an easier way.
you can do it on the software level I believe, like making keyboard macros or something. I searched download.com and pulled this up > http://www.download.com/AutoHotkey/3000-2094_4-10430110.html?tag=lst-0-3 maby thats what you were looking for? or see this project > http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=72775
YOu can buy simple programmable circuit kits which allow you to program, say, ten buttons to act like keyboard keys and plug that into a PS2 port. These circuits are designed for people who want their PC built into an emulated Arcade Game cabinet.
I'm looking for a way to make external keys (not linked to my keyboard) work as media keys in windows. So I think that program is not what I am looking for, it looks interesting for other reasons though. I would prefer not to use the serial port as I might need that for other things and since the PS2 port supposedly supports media keys (or at least XP supports them) without additional drivers that would make it alot easier for me. I would need to make a program to interpret the serial keys that then can link them to Foobar and that is something I don't want to do. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction to such a circut? Can the same thing be made to work with USB as well? I must confess that my knowledge of electronics is somewhat limited so a simple sollution might be better then a good one... or something.
what your talking about is an I-PAC from http://www.ultimarc.com/ as far as keyboard encoders go there just agout the best you can get and they come in USB, I've got one that used to be in my MAME cab... *sob* I miss my cab.....
It seems that's a bit out of my price-range as I can get a keyboard with media-keys for less than 20 Euro and that controller with shipping would be alot more. And it's a bit overkill when I only want the mediakeys anyway. I can see the benefits if you are going to scrap the normal keyboard and go for custom controls only though. I'll get back to you with some progress once work is done on this.
