Pseudonymous maker “legrandbingus,” hereafter merely “Bingus,” has a bit of pal to maintain them firm whereas they sort away at their pc — within the type of an interactive Keyboard Cat animation displayed on an OLED panel.
“[I] had the thought of constructing a bit of OLED keyboard companion for some time,” Bingus explains of the undertaking, “so when the elements got here in I instantly went to work: [A Raspberry] Pi, OLED display screen (I selected an I2C display screen for a neater setup), and an enough USB energy provide.”
The animation on the show is a variant of Keyboard Cat, spun off from the unique keyboard-“taking part in” feline Fatso — recorded in 1984 by proprietor Charlie Schmidt and given a brand new lease of life when uploaded to YouTube in 2007 — with a cartoon cat hammering away at a small music keyboard. What makes the companion intelligent, although, is it really works by reacting to typing on the actual keyboard.
“[A] script at the moment shows totally different frames for various key-presses, retains a body for a repeating key-press, and has a separate body for the house bar,” Bingus explains. “There is a Python script working on the PC that makes use of the keyboard module for logging keystrokes and makes use of the socket module for IP.”
The undertaking is just like, however developed independently of, the Bongo Cat characteristic within the QMK/VIA firmware. (📷: tinymakesthings)
That IP connectivity sends the keystrokes to the animation server, working on a Raspberry Pi 3 Mannequin B+ related to the community. “I did not have any [Raspberry] Pi Zeros left for serial interfacing,” Bingus explains. “I additionally considered placing the Pi in-between the keyboard and PC and break up/learn the USB indicators however determined to not as I haven’t got my gear setup for that in the mean time.”
Extra particulars can be found in Bingus’ Reddit thread, however whereas the maker has pledged to add the supply code to GitHub within the close to future it had not been publicly launched on the time of writing.
