Has anyone come up with a directional pendant to use with Easel? The computer I usually use with Easel is a Surface Pro 4 and trying to use the touchpad to press the directional buttons is a bit annoying. I started to look to see if an Arduino Uno could be set up to emulate a USB keyboard and apparently it is possible, though it’s a bit more complicated because you have to tweak the firmware on the USB interface chip to support keyboard emulation. The Arduino’s that can do this out of the box cost a lot more.
the Arduino Leonardo is easy to setup but making the keypad is not easy.
have you thought about a
or a
regards Neal
I originally hoped it could be done with an Arduino Uno because I’ve got a bunch of those around. The Leonardo is marked as discontinued and the current models that can do the keyboard emulation are a lot more expensive. I’ve also got some arcade style buttons which aren’t being used for anything, so I’m hoping to use those. I guess I’ll just go for a Leonardo and give it a shot. I’ve got an X-Controller so I have the stop/start and other functions, I’m really only looking for ±X, ±Y, and ±Z. A minor annoyance is that the Surface only has one USB socket which is used for the X-Carve itself, so I’ll have to add a USB hub to the mix as well, but I think I’ve got one kicking around someplace.
Sounds like a plan 
I found this utube video where this guy makes a “joystick/footpedals” he used a teensy,
it might help if the code was public, but I think you can hack most of it from the video.
regards Neal