All laptops have a working keyboard and mouse built into them, the only problem is that you can’t use these tools on other computers that don’t have them. At least, until now. [Peter] has created the KeyMouSerial in order to use his laptop’s keyboard and mouse as physical devices on his Raspberry Pi, finally freeing the bonds holding our laptops’ human interface devices back.

The software for KeyMouSerial copies keystroke and mouse information and sends this out via a serial port on his laptop (using a USB to serial adapter). From there the information is translated by an Arduino into HID commands which are sent via USB to the target computer, in this case a Raspberry Pi. It’s a pretty elegant solution to carrying a bulky keyboard and mouse along just for a Raspberry Pi, or for any computer that might not have access to a network and SSH.

[Peter] has also been working on using his iPod as a serial-to-USB converter, so if you’re a Rockbox developer and want to help out then drop him a line. All of the software is available (for Windows, Mac, or Linux) including the Arduino sketch if you want to try this software out for yourself. And, if you don’t want to turn a computer into a keyboard and want to go the other direction and turn a keyboard into a computer, that is also an option.

[Nikhil] has been experimenting with human interface devices (HID) in relation to security. We’ve seen in the past how HID can be exploited using inexpensive equipment. [Nikhil] has built his own simple device to drop malicious files onto target computers using HID technology.

The system runs on a Teensy 3.0. The Teensy is like a very small version of Arduino that has built-in functionality for emulating human interface devices, such as keyboards. This means that you can trick a computer into believing the Teensy is a keyboard. The computer will treat it as such, and the Teensy can enter keystrokes into the computer as though it were a human typing them. You can see how this might be a security problem.

[Nikhil’s] device uses a very simple trick to install files on a target machine. It simply opens up Powershell and runs a one-liner command. Generally, this commend will create a file based on input received from a web site controlled by the attacker. The script might download a trojan virus, or it might create a shortcut on the user’s desktop which will run a malicious script. The device can also create hot keys that will run a specific script every time the user presses that key.

Protecting from this type off attack can be difficult. Your primary option would be to strictly control USB devices, but this can be difficult to manage, especially in large organizations. Web filtering would also help in this specific case, since the attack relies on downloading files from the web. Your best bet might be to train users to not plug in any old USB device they find lying around. Regardless of the methodology, it’s important to know that this stuff is out there in the wild.

For those of us who worry about the security of our wireless devices, every now and then something comes along that scares even the already-paranoid. The latest is a device from [Samy] that is able to log the keystrokes from Microsoft keyboards by sniffing and decrypting the RF signals used in the keyboard’s wireless protocol. Oh, and the entire device is camouflaged as a USB wall wart-style power adapter.

The device is made possible by an Arduino or Teensy hooked up to an NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz RF chip that does the sniffing. Once the firmware for the Arduino is loaded, the two chips plus a USB charging circuit (for charging USB devices and maintaining the camouflage) are stuffed with a lithium battery into a plastic shell from a larger USB charger. The options for retrieving the sniffed data are either an SPI Serial Flash chip or a GSM module for sending the data automatically via SMS.

The scary thing here isn’t so much that this device exists, but that encryption for Microsoft keyboards was less than stellar and provides little more than a false sense of security. This also serves as a wake-up call that the things we don’t even give a passing glance at might be exactly where a less-honorable person might look to exploit whatever information they can get their hands on. Continue past the break for a video of this device in action, and be sure to check out the project in more detail, including source code and schematics, on [Samy]’s webpage.

Thanks to [Juddy] for the tip!

Cheap keyboards never come with extra buttons, and for [Pengu MC] this was simply unacceptable. Rather than go out and buy a nice keyboard, a microcontroller was found in the parts drawer and put to work building this USB multimedia button human interface device that has the added bonus of looking like an old-school Walkman.

The functions that [Pengu MC] wants don’t require their own drivers. All of the buttons on this device are part of the USB standard for keyboards: reverse, forward, play/pause, and volume. This simplifies the software side quite a bit, but [Pengu MC] still wrote his own HID descriptors, tied all of the buttons to the microcontroller, and put it in a custom-printed enclosure.

If you’re looking to build your own similar device, the Arduino Leonardo, Micro, or Due have this functionality built in, since the USB controller is integrated on the chip with everything else. Some of the older Arduinos can be programmed to do the same thing as well! And, with any of these projects, you can emulate any keypress that is available, not just the multimedia buttons.

The award-winning Minecraft is a very popular PC game and also pretty addictive. It was originally created  by Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson, later developed and supported on different platforms and recently acquired by Microsoft for 2.5$ billions.

Arduino user lakhanm shared  a DIY keyboard prototyped with Arduino Uno and substituting the basic keyboard controls such as move forwards or backwards. The project is also compatible with most of the Arduino boards. 

Take a look at the circuit below and grab the sketch and bill of materials at this link.

If you are anything like [Antoine], you would love to be able to control your PC with a simple hand-held remote control from anywhere in your house. [Antoine] wrote in to tell us about his wireless computer remote that emulates a USB keyboard, making it suitable for any device that uses a USB keyboard.

His blog post is very well written and contains a ton of design information and background on the project. He initially wanting to easily control his PC’s music from anywhere in his house without needing to be within line of site of his computer. The end result is a very handy remote that can be used to change music, video, and even launch applications on his computer. The system consists of a base station for his remote that connects to the computer and acts as a USB keyboard, and the remote itself. The base station uses V-USB on an Arduino to interface with the computer, and VirtualWire to handle the wireless protocol for the remote. For those of you who don’t know about VirtualWire (now superseded by RadioHead), it is a very cool Arduino library that lets you easily use raw wireless interfaces (also called vanilla wireless interfaces).

Without going into too much detail here (be sure to see the actual post for more information), the remote itself was redesigned after the initial proof of concept to maximize battery life. The final power consumption is very impressive, resulting in a battery life of more than two years! This remote system is very well put together and contains many aspects that can easily be reused for other projects.

This pair of musical keyboard hacks both use light to detect inputs. The pair of tips came in on the same day, which sparks talk of consipiracy theory here at Hackaday. Something in the weather must influence what types of projects people take on because we frequently see trends like this one. Video of both projects is embedded after the jump.

On the left is a light-sensitive keyboard which [Kaziem] is showing off. In this image he’s rolling a marble around on the surface. As it passes over the Cadmium Sulfide sensors (which are arranged in the pattern of white and black keys from a piano keyboard) the instrument plays pitches based on the changing light levels. [Thanks Michael via Make]

To the right is [Lex's] proximity sensor keyboard. It uses a half-dozen Infrared proximity sensor which pick up reflected light. He calls it a ‘quantised theremin’ and after seeing it in action we understand why. The overclocked Raspberry Pi playing the tones reacts differently based on distance from the keyboard itself, and hand alignment with the different sensors.

Have you ever wondered to use your old-fashioned NeXT keyboard with your current, non-ADB computer? The main issue that needs to be solved regards how to interface this ADB keyboard (standing for Apple Desktop Bus, an old protocol used in former NeXT and Apple computers) with a standard USB interface.

In this nice tutorial, Ladyada and Pt describe the approach they have used, based on an Arduino Micro board and… some luck in searching for the right information about the scancode table of the keyboard  ^^.

More information can be found here.

[Via: Adafruit Learning System]

Sure, Red Bull may have gotten a lot of attention by sponsoring Felix Baumgartner's space dive, but it's not the only beverage-maker that has made some great accomplishments possible. The Prague-based brewery Staropramen was a sponsor at the recent Webstock 2012 conference, where the folks from Robofun Create showed off this so-called Beer Keyboard built with the brewer's backing. As you can see, it's more beer than keyboard, with 40 cans of Staropramen serving as "keys" that just need to be gently pressed to input a letter. To make that actually work, Robofun paired an Arduino board with some capacitive controllers for the base, and connected that to a Raspberry Pi that linked the keyboard to the TV. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the keyboard has since gone missing. Head on past the break for a video.

Continue reading Beer Keyboard combines Arduino and Raspberry Pi... and beer

Filed under: Peripherals

Beer Keyboard combines Arduino and Raspberry Pi... and beer originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Arduino Forum moderator Nick Gammon finds himself typing in the same things over and over again while responding to questions within the community. On the list are links to primers about interrupts, serial, and debugging; plus there are also few phrases and markup tags. To make his life a little easier, he used a 16-key keypad and the Arduino Leonardo’s capability to act like a USB keyboard to make all these strings one pushbutton away.