7 ms·
Dip Switch USB Stick
- sigmonsays 5y agofun stuff... use cases? here is a couple... 1. profile location switching. pin 1 on/off = work/away - switch system configs appropriately. 2. desktop workspaces, flipping pin 2 on enables workspace switching. pin 3 and 4 control workspace number. What else?
- bobsmooth 5y agoThis could be useful for conferencing on the go. Toggle switches for webcam, mic, mute, uhh...different channels?
- adamrmcd 5y agoA form of two-factor authentication? (Something you have + something you know.) Simply set the value to match a rotating 8-bit token and plug-in to login :)
- c0nsumer 5y agoWith this sort of switch you have to worry about the lifecycle of the switch. They aren't meant to be toggled routinely. For the mentioned DIP switch (https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/5461.pdf https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/5461.pdf) it's basically assured it'll be fine through 1000 cycles, and likely dead at 10,000. 1000 cycles is only ~3x/day for a year.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoIntegrate with Linux bootloader / boot process. pin 0 on = normal boot, pin 0 off = single user mode. pin 1 on = GRUB interactive screen enabled, pin 1 off = GRUB interactive screen disabled.
- netsharc 5y agoSame idea but a switch: https://hackaday.io/project/179539-hardware-boot-selection-switch https://hackaday.io/project/179539-hardware-boot-selection-s...
- helpm33 5y agoI had something like that hanging off a parallel port in a PC in 1990; it read the status bits of a printer port and booted accordingly. Could still do it today, via a $1 USB serial port's status bits.
- hatware 5y agoCould be useful with home assistant in a lot of ways, though your use cases kind of cover them.
- elihu 5y agoaddblock on/off, javascript on/off, vpn on/off, qwerty/dvorak, default editor is vim/emacs, indentation is tabs/spaces, the dress is blue and black / white and gold, fund police/defund police, those are/aren't the droids we're looking for
- bsima 5y agoto be/not to be
- rpastuszak 5y ago: w q ! 1 2 3 4
- loudthing 5y agoThis seems super pointless but fun.
- bobsmooth 5y agoGood excuse to use the pretty rainbow switches.
- sen 5y agoThe best projects are.
- nine_k 5y agoIt can also serve as the simplest user-configurable hardware key. Many hardware keys from 1990s were not that more complex.
- cyberge99 5y agoI once hooked up a parallel port to a garage door opener to emulate dip switches. Back then garage doors use an 8 pin dip to set your code differently from your neighbors.
- nitrogen 5y agoHow long did it take to try all 256 codes?
- fckthisguy 5y agoCould be a PITA with a DIP switch; they can be fiddley. To actually broadcast all the codes in IR would take seconds, though.
- mark-r 5y agoYes, JSON or XML would probably be overkill. How about a simple text file with a sequence of 8 '0' or '1' characters?
- Minor49er 5y agoNah, it would be best to use a custom piece of hardware that occupies a USB slot to store that data instead Jokes aside, it's a fun and cool project to learn about microcontrollers
- mark-r 5y agoI was thinking of putting the text file on a USB memory stick, so you could continue to waste the USB port. You could probably pick up an old obsolete one for less than the BOM of this project.
- duxup 5y agoI would have preferred jumpers… but I’ll accept this.
- zw123456 5y agoBack when I was very first learning to use the USB driver for the PIC MCU I made something similar except it was even dumber, it was just one push button and one LED. I showed it to a few buddies and same thing, they started thinking of all kinds of funny use cases for it, like a USB controlled light switch or whatever. But seriously, the PIC USB driver, super simple to use and very useful for many real useful purposes.
- progre 5y agoIf PIC programmers/debuggers didn't cost about the same as a months rent, or at least didn't use proprietary Windows-only drivers... I love PIC stuff too but jesus they make it hard to choose their stuff for hobby work.
- Karliss 5y agoHaven't touched PICs in a while, but PICkit seems to still be a thing. I remember getting into microcontrollers by saving pocketmoney for pickit2 when I was in school. They also now have an even cheaper option - mplab snap ~30 Eur. That's approximately same as 1-2 official Arduinos. Not exactly month's rent. At the same time a good JTAG probe like J-Link for arm micros can cost 300-800 Eur. There are both cheap and expensive solutions for most microcontrollers.
- NavinF 5y ago> a good JTAG probe like J-Link for arm micros can cost 300-800 Eur I’ve never understood how they stay in business. Dirt cheap SWD programmers work with pretty much any arm chips and give you all the debugging features like breakpoints over just 2 wires.
- callmemclovin 5y agoJust did a quick search for JTAG debuggers on Aliexpress, and the majority seem to be clones of Segger J-Links, so yeah... it's easy to produce the (simple) hardware and sell for cheap if you just steal the software, it's the same with Saleae Logic Analyzers.
- gkhartman 5y agoOne of my favorite things in life is the the feeling I get when I open something up to find a pcb populated with dip switches (or jumpers) that are clearly labeled on the pcb. This practice has most likely disappeared to save pcb space, but it feels great when you don't have to grep config files or search for a long lost manual pdf.
- mark-r 5y agoThis would have backfired on one project I worked on. Near the end of the project I was asked to document the working of the DIP switches. I discovered that the settings were too complex, I couldn't document it in any way that would make sense to a user. But then I realized that they were being interpreted in software, and it was my software - I could make them do anything I wanted! So I wrote the documentation the way I thought made sense, then changed the software to match the documentation. If the switches had been labeled on the PCB it would have been too late for that.
- Youden 5y agoOn the other hand, whoever would have labelled them on the PCB could come to the same conclusion, right?
- mark-r 5y agoNo, because I'm the one they would have been asking for the appropriate labels and they would have accepted them without question. There was a direct correlation between each switch and a board feature originally, so making up labels wouldn't have been hard. The problem was that the features interacted in a way that made it difficult to describe combinations that would deliver the desired outcome, and some combinations were flat out invalid.
- gkhartman 5y agoThat's an interesting situation that I hadn't really thought of, having only been on the user side of the switches. It seems like they would be painful to implement when adding them to a large project where software, hardware, and documentation may be handled by separate teams.
- jpm_sd 5y agoThis is so weird, I love it
- intrepidhero 5y agoThose rainbow colored DIP switches are sweet! I've got think of a use for them now. https://www.newark.com/erg-components/sds-8-014/dip-switch-8-spst-co-slide-1a/dp/08WX5542 https://www.newark.com/erg-components/sds-8-014/dip-switch-8...
- amelius 5y agoAre they actually good switches?
- linsomniac 5y agoGlen said this to me about them a few days ago: "They're expensive, finicky, and not readily available. 5 to 10x the price of their surface mount and through hole competitors."
- incanus77 5y agoWow, it's more than $1 a bit!
- jagged-chisel 5y agoAt least they’re reusable
- pmoriarty 5y agoCache of this article which does not require javascript to view: https://nitter.net/bikerglen/status/1482516332432162820 https://nitter.net/bikerglen/status/1482516332432162820
- pabs3 5y agoAnother way to avoid JavaScript is to send a Googlebot User-Agent to Twitter. Nitter is better of course.
- tentacleuno 5y agoDoesn't Twitter check the reverse IP, per Google's recommendation in their official documentation?
- pabs3 5y agoIt didn't last time I checked.
- nfriedly 5y agoWow, that loads so much faster than "real" twitter!
- lokedhs 5y agoI can recommend Nitter Redirect. I'm thankful of it every time I happen to click on a Twitter link. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...
- nfriedly 5y agoInstalled and already benefiting from it. Thanks!
- microtherion 5y agoIn related news, there is the tetrabyte SSD drive: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1484017857696464898.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1484017857696464898.html
- linsomniac 5y agoFYI: The Tetrabyte SSD is by the same guy as this, Glen Akins.
- hughrr 5y agoVery few write cycles!
- efitz 5y agoJumpers or nothing for me.
- ahartmetz 5y agoI, too, am a member of Generation Jumpers. In the 90s, manufacturers of consumer hardware saved the money for dip switches, so for me, hardware has jumpers and nothing else!
- GekkePrutser 5y agoIf you make a stick with switches I would choose something more easily toggled and durable than DIP switches. Those work fine in a situation where you rarely touch them if ever, like a luxury version of a jumper grid. But if you go out of your way to add them to a system, odds are you're going to need to change them more often and usability and durability become a factor.
- Beta-7 5y agoI think that's the idea of the project, dip switches are used on boards to select a configuration (since you only need to do it on setup)... speaking of which, i wonder if a jumper version is planned for the IDE HDD nostalgia.
- metaphor 5y agoWow, figured uniquely colored switches would drive up cost[1], but certainly didn't expect over US$10/ea at 10 units MOQ...hard pass. [1] https://www.newark.com/erg-components/sds-8-014/dip-switch-8-spst-co-slide-1a/dp/08WX5542 https://www.newark.com/erg-components/sds-8-014/dip-switch-8...
- NavinF 5y ago>$10 Wow that’s insane. For anyone wondering, a normal DIP switch is around $0.30 which is already kinda expensive in the context of cheap consumer electronics.
- 0xmarcin 5y agoAmazing project, I think programming this thing may be a good entry intro USB device drivers programming world. This should be also reproducible on Arduino, since a long time ppl are making USB arduino keyboards. Making USB arduino dip switch should not be more difficult.
- Donckele 5y agoSo how do you connect to the device? Serial? or it drops a file in a virtual drive?
- dusted 5y agoI have a similar, slightly more usable (but still stupid) project in the works :P