[mythtvnz] case for mini itx FE solution

[Robin Gilks]

> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Andrew Ruthven <andrew at etc.gen.nz> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 13:40 +1300, Pshem Kowalczyk wrote:
>>
>>> Hence the question - what case would/do you use for the mini-itx board
>>> that seats in the lounge?
>>
>> I took an old '80's CD player, gutted it and put a mini-itx board and
>> DVD drive in it.  It looks very retro in my stereo cabinet.
>>
>> One of the long-term goals is to wire up the buttons on the front panel
>> so they can control MythTV.
>
> I read a howto once on using a standard keyboard chip to wire up to
> buttons to emulate keystrokes. Of course myth works with keyboards
> natively and this setup would work well.
>
> The keyboard works something like a grid, each key is identified by a
> row and column. When you short row x and colunn 4 it produces a
> certain key. Work out which two inputs to the keyboard chip for each
> key you want.
>
> I didn't explain that very well. I shall google for original article...

The parallel port interface for lcdproc can handle the scanning of keys
and pass them to MythTV - I know because I hacked up the code in myth that
allows you to order the keys to the required functions (this is before
mythcontrols came along). As far as I remember the circuit is just the
keyswitches plus one resistor per X-axis line. I use
up/down/left/right/esc/select (which uses 6 output and 1 input line, 1
resistor) and can get to just about every function without having to find
the remote :-) The menu items are of course displayed on the 20x2 LCD
display (South Island Components have them for about 35 bucks) so I don't
need the TV on either.


-- 
Robin Gilks