The Trinket M0 is a tiny Arduino compatible programmable board that can be programmed with Circuit Python or in C using the Arduino IDE. If you get one of these, be sure to get the “M0” model (Adafruit product 3500) and not the regular older Trinket $6.95 (Adafruit product 1501) - this one uses older USB logic and won’t work as a keyboard with many computers any more. Here’s what one looks like (they’re very small, this image from Adafruit is magnified): Adafruit Trinket M0 (photo: Adafruit) Luckily, we don’t need to build our own keyboard logic board type thing, as Adafruit makes something called the Trinket M0 which costs $8.95 and can handle all of that for us. On its own, a microswitch or arcade button isn’t going to be understood by a computer as a keypress… we need to trick the computer into thinking it’s got an external keyboard attached, then have the button press send the right sequence of key codes to trigger the desired action.
Any type of button switch will work for this project though! I’ve put a shopping list at the end of this article. Some places sell the microswitches separately, just be sure to get both the button and a microswitch to slot into it as the button won’t function without the switch. If you don’t have one of these, you can get them from eBay or many other online arcade parts stores. Here’s the one I had on hand: Arcade button with microswitch - needs a clean! These use a microswitch so make a very satisfying mechanical noise when pressed.
For this project I decided that something with a really good click sound when pressed was better than a flashy LED, so I reached for a pile of older arcade buttons that I had kicking around. I’ve previously built a weekly task tracker box with Arduino using these, as well as a game with a Raspberry Pi. I really enjoy building things that use arcade buttons, as they’re very satisfying to press, super durable and some even have LEDs inside them so you can use them as an input and an output. Let’s take a look at how to make one, starting with the hardware… Hardware Build I set out to see if I could build a single button custom keyboard that would do this for me, and to do so in a way that would make it easily customizable for other purposes. You need to become proficient at hitting (on a Macintosh) Command + Shift + A to toggle the microphone and Command + Shift + V to toggle the video camera. With the popular video conferencing service Zoom, there’s no single “I need privacy now” button that will both mute the microphone and turn off the camera. Perhaps you are having a sneezing fit or something’s boiling over on the hob. Perhaps something you can’t control is going on in the background, or someone needs your attention for a moment.
I’m sure that, like me, you find yourself needing to mute your microphone and turn off the camera frequently. Recently we’ve all been spending a lot more of our time on video conference calls from home.
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