Help picking a feather board for my handled keyboard project

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nazzatronics
 
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Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:26 pm

Help picking a feather board for my handled keyboard project

Post by nazzatronics »

Hello community,

I am a programmer looking to (get into microelectronics and) build a wireless handheld split bluetooth keyboard.

I have been looking at the feather range for the two micro-controllers for my project (one for each hand). Specifically I was hoping to use the 'Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense' (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4516).

The potential problem is from the description in the Bluetooth feather guide,
Can not be used as a 'client' with your favorite MCU at the moment (unlike the nRF51), since code all runs natively (making this both a pro or a con depending on your needs)
Does this mean that I cannot use them to wirelessly communicate with each other (and a host computer)?

If so is there a good product alternative in the range noting that I would like the power to extend my project with and Accelrometer, Gyroscope and magnetometer.

Thank you for any help ;)

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blnkjns
 
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Re: Help picking a feather board for my handled keyboard pro

Post by blnkjns »

Do they need to communicate with eachother? Why not let them behave as 2 wireless keyboards. Your OS can handle two keyboards, no problem on that side.
For peer-to-peer, you could either go back to nRF51 boards, like the micro:bit v1, or add a simple radio, like the nRF24, which is cheap and great for simple wireless data transmission. It is not encrypted though. So beware one could in theory snoop passwords. I say in theory, as most households do not snoop on nRF24 networks....
You could always add some protection yourself to garble the data stream.

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nazzatronics
 
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Re: Help picking a feather board for my handled keyboard pro

Post by nazzatronics »

Thank you for your response,

The two halfs of the keyboard do indeed to to communicate with each other. I think I will go with a radio communication solution!

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