I don’t know many (or any) people who think of characters and words in binary, but that might just be a limitation on my end. If you prefer binary, maybe this is something for you. If you just want to geek out, you’re welcome to stay here too.
Using a 2-button macro-keyboard and some Arduino code, you can tap in binary and have the keyboard enter ASCII characters.
Hardware
I used a 2-button keyboard of my own design, you can make one with a Pro Micro board too. It’s essentially the same setup as the basic 3-button board, just with 2 buttons. I also have 2 RGB LEDs on the board, but that’s optional.
Software
The code is written in Arduino C++, using the FastLED and Keyboard libraries.
For practicing, it shows the binary code first, then when you have all 7 bits, it backspaces and replaces it with the actual character. Tabs (7 ASCII) are replaced with 6 tabs (for the Twitter reply UI). Control characters other than tab or return are ignored.
I used a random online ASCII / binary table as a reference.
Sidenotes
Random comments …
- The codes uses 7-bit binary, which covers most needs.
- Typing in binary is weird.
- The video was recorded with OpenCamera on Android, which messed up audio synchronization.
- It turns out, a binary keyboard isn’t that practical. #shrug
Comments / questions
There's currently no commenting functionality here. If you'd like to comment, please use Mastodon and mention me ( @hi@johnmu.com ) there. Thanks!