Collaborate Disseminate
Let’s face it, those touchpads on laptops are awful, and were never meant to be the primary mouse for all-day use. Not that external mice are much better on your shoulder and neck in the long term — especially if you’re reaching past a 10-key and back to use it. …read more
Continue reading Thumbmouse Keeps Your Hands on the Keyboard
There are a surprising wealth of parts inside of old laptops that can be easily scavenged, but often these proprietary tidbits of electronics will need a substantial amount of work to make them useful again. Obviously things such as hard drives and memory can easily be used again, but it’s …read more
Apple is releasing iPadOS 13.4 on March 24 with full support for trackpad, works with its existing mice and supports third-party mice connected over Bluetooth or USB.
The post Apple to Release iPadOS 13.4 Next Week With Full Mouse and Trackpad Support… Continue reading Apple to Release iPadOS 13.4 Next Week With Full Mouse and Trackpad Support
Bluetooth keyboards are great when you need to type on a tablet and don’t want much of the screen lost to virtual keys, but a built-in trackpad would be useful. Rather than bulk out the form factor, Belarus-based Clevetura is launching a keyb… Continue reading Click&Touch keyboard puts the trackpad in the keys
Old laptops are easy to find and many have a trackpad with a PS/2 interface hardwired into the guts of the laptop. [Build It] wanted one of those trackpads for use in the DIY Raspberry Pi laptop he’s working on. But the Raspberry Pi has no PS/2 input, and he read that a PS/2 to USB adapter wouldn’t be reliable enough. His solution? Wire the trackpad to an Arduino and have the Arduino convert the trackpad’s PS/2 to USB.
After removing a few screws, he had the trackpad free of the laptop. Looking up the trackpad’s part number online he …read more
Continue reading Raspberry Pi Trackpad From Salvaged Trackpad Plus Arduino
Two researchers of Responsive Environments, MIT Media Lab, have put to together a device that is an amazing array of musical instruments squeezed into one flexible package. Made using seven layers of fabrics with different electrical properties, the result can be played using touch, proximity, pressure, stretch, or with combinations of them. Using a fabric-based keyboard, ribbon-controller, and trackpad, it can be played as a one-octave keyboard, a theremin, and in ways that have no words, such as stretching while pressing keys. It can also be folded up and stuffed into a case along with your laptop, and care has …read more
Phone screens keep getting bigger. Computer screens keep getting bigger. Why not a large trackpad to use as a mouse? [MaddyMaxey] had that thought and with a few components and some sewing skills created a trackpad in a tablecloth.
The electronics in this project are right off the shelf. A Flora board for the brains and 4 capacitive touch boards. If you haven’t seen the Flora, it is a circular-shaped Arduino made for sewing into things. The real interesting part is the construction. If you haven’t worked with conductive fabric and thread, this will be a real eye-opener. [Maddy’s] blog …read more
