Back towards the beginning of the semester, one of our projects was to convert a USB keyboard into some type of alternate controller for a computer game. I took pictures while I was working on my project (a pair of gloves with contacts on the fingers and various other locations) but only just got them off my camera. Here are some of the initial steps in putting them together.
Here’s the circuitboard taken from the old keyboard. Getting it out was difficult because it’s important not to break it. Click here to go to my flickr photostream where you can hover over the picture and see the various parts of the circuitboard…
In order to make contacts for the fingertips of the gloves, I needed metal. Cheap or free is best. So, I cut up a couple of aluminum pop cans into square pieces. I bent the edges over and sanded them so they weren’t sharp.
Then I sanded the coating off of each piece. Though it looks like just metal, there is a thin filmy coating over the surface. This needed to go. The dark spots on the edges in this picture show where the metal is still coated – the shiny part is clean!
This is one completed contact. The metal has been sanded and is completely shiny. Then I soldered a long piece of copper wire to it. The metal square will later be attached to the fingertips of the gloves, and the wire will be soldered to the pins on the circuitboard.
A bundle of completed contacts! They are all made the same way. I added tape to the solder point for extra strength and stability.
That’s all I have for now, but you can view all of these photos by visiting my flickr page here.
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