Supercon 2022 showed that hackers are starting to come together again in Maker Faires, conventions, and festivals. [Toby Chui] plans to be one of those hackers and wants something to give to fellow attendees. Thus, the $3 Macro Pad was born.
We’ve seen our fair share of macro pads, so a simple four-key pad isn’t exactly novel. However, the focus on size and cost makes it stand out. The pad is the size of a business card, making it easy to give away. For a microcontroller, [Toby] used a CH552G, which is cheap and compatible with the Arduino IDE. Although, with 10 GPIO, a matrix layout could have supported a full-sized number pad, the diodes required would have added to the cost significantly. A cheap PCB and 3d-printed base make up the device’s bulk.
[Toby] provides a handy tool for assigning keys from your browser without coding. However, the source code is on GitHub if you want to develop a more complicated scheme. This isn’t the first time we’ve featured the CH552 chip, and it likely won’t be the last.
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