EasyButton Mod
My son loves the Teletubbies. One of his favorite games is a simple flash based counting game. To advance from one counting screen to the next you hit the space bar. Unfortunately, the spacebar sits right next to the alt keys, so a mis-key activates the Firefox menu. This brings the happy game to a screeching halt as he whales away at the space bar, only to have the computer beep at him.
While not specific to Autism, I noticed all the computers at his school had the big, giant buttons attached. These turned out to be switches designed to aid in computer interaction for kids with Autism. The down side was the price; these things run from fifty dollars up. The obvious solution; make one.
The Plan
A Button
I wanted a fairly big button that could take a beating; Price needed to be in the five to ten dollar range. This ruled out my normal suppliers. Happ controls didn't have anything in the sizes I wanted and the buttons Mouser had were industrial (aka $$$$) buttons. I decided to look at the interface while scouting out big buttons.
...and an Interface
Since doing the arcade machine, the 360 controller and assorted microcontroller projects, I knew I had a ton of options for the interface.
I wanted a cheap USB interface that would fit inside whatever housing I used. Cheap ruled out the 360 controller. Using a pic microcontroller was a fun idea, but getting USB meant either an Atmega chip and a cheepo programmer, or one of the more expensive pic chips.
I settled on a USB keyboard. While totally overkill (I only needed one button), it was dirt cheap. I picked up an eight dollar USB keyboard at Staples. While there I also stumbled on the goofy Easy Button. This is a fairly big button, built like a tank, that says 'That was easy.' when you click it. Total for the trip about thirteen bucks.
The idea was to remove the guts of the keyboard and wire the space bar to the switch from Staples and stuff all the guts back in the button housing. Turns out it was even fairly simple.
