Question for the experts: is it possible to do USB pass-through monitoring?
Specifically, I have an Apple Magic Keyboard connected to the Dell work PC. I'd like to capture the F7-F12 keys, and use them to control the music on my iPod. Currently I use an AutoHotKey script to send serial commands from the PC, but having 2 FTDI cables plugged in sometimes causes issues.
Yes, I'm effectively suggesting a keylogger, but without trying to record the keystrokes, just use them to trigger another UART. It could also be really nice to remap the Command key to Ctrl (again, I work around this with AutoHotKey, but it's imperfect).
> is it possible to do USB pass-through monitoring?
I fear it would need something a little bit more complex than just an Arduino on the hardware side. For some options, you could take a look at some recent versions of Facedancer [0] and their HW requirements.
> but having 2 FTDI cables plugged in sometimes causes issues
As long as you have genuine FTDI cables or at least ones that expose an unique serial number, you can use udev rules to have clean reproducible device names: https://askubuntu.com/a/165262/777894
I swear there was a HN post about someone who made a KVM alternative on this principal (pass KB/M through a microcontroller or something and have it act as downstream KB/M to multiple devices) but for the life of me I can't find it. That or I dreamed the whole thing up.
Are you thinking of the display-switch[0] script? Achieves K/V/M-switching with only a cheap USB-switch for hardware K/M-switching, and then this script detects such peripheral switching and emits DDC-commands for monitors to switch accordingly.
I saw it posted here on HN[1], and have been using it since then with great success.
TinyUSB allows a programmable chip (e.g. ESP32, SAM, STM32) to read USB flash drives, or behave as a keyboard and mouse.
A similar library for Arduino is V-USB.
https://hackaday.com/tag/tinyusb/
Question for the experts: is it possible to do USB pass-through monitoring?
Specifically, I have an Apple Magic Keyboard connected to the Dell work PC. I'd like to capture the F7-F12 keys, and use them to control the music on my iPod. Currently I use an AutoHotKey script to send serial commands from the PC, but having 2 FTDI cables plugged in sometimes causes issues.
Yes, I'm effectively suggesting a keylogger, but without trying to record the keystrokes, just use them to trigger another UART. It could also be really nice to remap the Command key to Ctrl (again, I work around this with AutoHotKey, but it's imperfect).