Jeff Epler's blog

Using Adafruit Macropad as LinuxCNC Control Pendant

CircuitPython recently gained the power to have custom USB descriptors. With these, we can define a USB HID device that will work with LinuxCNC's hal_input.

For instance, the Adafruit Macropad has a (very coarse, just 20 detents/revolution) encoder, 12 keyswitch positions, and an OLED screen.

The two pieces of software below, when placed in the CIRCUITPY drive as boot.py and code.py configure it for use with hal_input, using a halcmd line similar to loadusr -W hal_input Macropad. I haven't actually done the work of hooking it all the way up to Touchy yet, but it causes all the buttons & the encoder to appear in halcmd show pin.

This is just the device I picked first; there's nothing to prevent you from hooking up more exotic things like voltage/temperature monitors through added CircuitPython code. Addition of output reports for status indicators is left for the motivated reader.

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