Another KeyTronic F&F with CommonSense
Posted: 03 Dec 2019, 07:09
I recently came across Sangdrax's very nice write up of his General Rad KT F&F board - 1983 General Radio / Gen Rad LM2 (vintage tall keytronic) - and figured it was about time I tried CommonSense with one of my F&F boards too. Sangdrax covered things nicely in his post so I'm going to be fairly brief as far as redoing the board itself.
It was the usual replace the rotten F&F:
Wired up the Cypress:
and TADA!!
Well actually ...
It definitely took me some fiddling to get the basics of CommonSense, especially since I've never played with PSoC Creator before. As I think DMA may have remarked - READ THE DOCUMENTATION. I really found snacksthecat's guide very helpful too!
One notable thing on my board was that key presses do pull up keys in the same row on adjacent columns - more so downstream than upstream - for example pressing a key on column five might pull up the key on column four by 6, the key on column three by 4 and the key on column two by 2. Less effect upstream with the key on the next upstream column bumping 1 or 2 and no changes above that column.
This caused me a bit of a problem in a few spots - probably due to variation in my homemade F&F - where occasionally a key press on an upstream column would would pull up an adjacent key on that row beyond the maximum value reached when pressing the adjacent key itself - making it hard to set thresholds. At first I wasn't sure if this was a wiring issue but I did see that Sangdrax noted something similar a well:
It was mainly a matter of fiddling around with the F&F disks to get around this - again I suspect that inconsistencies in the thickness, etc. of my hand cut F&F disks was largely contributing this issue.
Another big thumbs up for DMA's CommonSense from me and I know I'll be using it more in the future.
- pcb_front_SM.jpg (207.46 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
- pcb_back_SM.jpg (244.29 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
It was the usual replace the rotten F&F:
- open1_SM.jpg (385.98 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
- replace_foam_SM.jpg (158.45 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
Wired up the Cypress:
- comonsense_SM.jpg (294.06 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
and TADA!!
Well actually ...
It definitely took me some fiddling to get the basics of CommonSense, especially since I've never played with PSoC Creator before. As I think DMA may have remarked - READ THE DOCUMENTATION. I really found snacksthecat's guide very helpful too!
One notable thing on my board was that key presses do pull up keys in the same row on adjacent columns - more so downstream than upstream - for example pressing a key on column five might pull up the key on column four by 6, the key on column three by 4 and the key on column two by 2. Less effect upstream with the key on the next upstream column bumping 1 or 2 and no changes above that column.
This caused me a bit of a problem in a few spots - probably due to variation in my homemade F&F - where occasionally a key press on an upstream column would would pull up an adjacent key on that row beyond the maximum value reached when pressing the adjacent key itself - making it hard to set thresholds. At first I wasn't sure if this was a wiring issue but I did see that Sangdrax noted something similar a well:
- quote.jpg (211.23 KiB) Viewed 3035 times
It was mainly a matter of fiddling around with the F&F disks to get around this - again I suspect that inconsistencies in the thickness, etc. of my hand cut F&F disks was largely contributing this issue.
Another big thumbs up for DMA's CommonSense from me and I know I'll be using it more in the future.