DIY Digital Scanning Keyboard (Cor Blimey!)

[The Old Crow]

On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Clive Jones wrote:

> 
> Okay then - since Digisound nicked my Digital note generator design and   
> I'm sueing the pants off them (just kidding), I've just come up with   
> (literally!) a digital keyboard which is self scanning and requires no uP   
> overhead. The design outputs an 8 bit data word representing the keys   
> "down", no key down=word value of 00h, it's all theory as I do more of   
> this than wave a soldering iron around nowadays, but, I see no reason why   
> this should'nt work.

  This is going strictly from memory, but the Paia `8780' keyboard scanning
circuit does almost exactly what you describe below, save for the RAM part.
I'll note the differences.

> 
> 1 - Build a clock circuit around 500khz, this should scan each key on a   
> 64 (yep, I know it should be 61 but 8x8 - yes?) keyboard every 7.8Khz,   
> plenty of time! The keyboard scan will occur every *other* event, the   
> non-keyboard scan event time or "blanking" period will be used for the   
> interface device to access the scan results from RAM e.g scan keyboard,   
> rest (one full keyboard scan event time - read results), scan   
> keyboard.....

  The 8780 used a master clock to drive a 4024 counter, which has a 7-bit 
output.  The MSB was used to flag an `active' or `dummy' scan of the 
keyboard; the lower 6 bits were used to drive the scanning matrix.
 
> 2 - Build an 8x8 scanning circuit, use two 4017 johnson counters - 1 to   
> drive the *rows* and 1 to drive the *columns* - you'll need to buffer the   

  Those lower six bits were split into two 3-bit groups.  One to drive the
binary select inputs on a 4051 for the `row' matrix, the other driving the
select inputs of the `column' matrix.  The 4051s' eight selected analog I/Os
were connected to the keyboard in an 8x8 standard fashion with 5 notes for
the final row group (61 keys.)  61 isolation diodes were also used (and
arranged along the bottom of the encoder PCB.)

> gate to prevent it going into orbit. The output of this nand gate could   
> be used to trigger a gate voltage generator (you couldn't do it directly   
> as it's "on" pulse would be so short you couldn't trigger an EG with   
> it!).

  The key down pulse for a given key was done by connecting the analog
switch common I/O pin of one 4051 to ground, the other analog switch common 
I/O pin, with a pull-up attached, went to the I/O connector--this signal 
would drop low for one key-scan period for each key found down.

  The encoder output looked like this:

      D7 -- active/dummy scan flag, low=active
      D6 -- key down flag, low=active
      D5 -\
      D4 -- decoder column bits (also go to `column' 4051)
      D3 -/
      D2 -\
      D1 -- decoder row bits (also go to `row' 4051)
      D0 -/

  This presents the scan status, key status and key number to whatever
device was attached.

> Okay following so far?
> 
> 3 - Addressing the memory: Whilst all this is going on the 555 is also   

  There was no external RAM circuit used for the 8780; the encoder's
output port (above) was simply connected to either a DAC & S/H circuit 
(along with a small mod where pressing a key would stop the encoder clock 
by routing the key down signal line to the `gating' input of the master 
clock.  Look in a Forrest Mims notebook under the 4011 IC for an example.)
OR the encoder output port was attached to a computer's input port.  The 
computer was responsible for reading the keyboard port and buffering key 
it found down on active scans.

   (Did I get that right, John? :)


    --Scott

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