I have an Arduino. I have access to a couple of neat PS/2-connected card-readers from ye olde times. The Arduino has no PS/2 connector. Fail? Maybe.
A guy from the Arduino core team (the long-hair to the right) lives in Malmö, my town.
He’s made his own connector-happy little outboarder PCB kit, which has the added bonus of being home to some audio-recording chips.
I had met him during the BarCamp day (we snuck out, to see the electronics folks’ meetup, hehe), and seen what his Smapler could do. Auto-generated beats using voice sounds only. Très organic.
But what really got me was the lowly PS/2 connector.
So, I stalked him online, SMSed him, and he promptly invited me to his house, to pick up a kit. I think I was the first customer. I got to see his oscilloscope (fancy, white plastic).
But, about the board: In the picture above, there are little green plastic pieces, with punky metal spikes. They are so-called headers, where you can connect a wire (like in the PC) to a knob, to control weird audio things. And man, the included the knobs.
The kicker for me is: this is not a pre-built product. It’s a kit. I got the PCB, and all the components I need. Add a solder gun, and some elbow grease, and I have a unit. That part is to-be-done, but I want to be done with it, and ready for the previously mentioned Arduino meetup here in Malmö.
(If this got you excited, they already take email orders at team "alpha-hrrm" blushingboy.org until their funky new web presence is open. My interest in that business is that I want local initiatives to succeed.)
So, in a possible future, I will be able to read magnetic cards into my Arduino’s brain. Wow. Flabbergasting.
