“Rev 2.0 of the RP2040 Joystick Mouse, as well as the code that makes it work
Over the last few months, I have been using the initial revision of this project on almost a daily basis. It has come a long way since the initial concept was implemented on the breadboard.
While completely functional, and relatively easy to use, quite a few things started adding up – making me believe that it could be better…
That prompted me to start thinking about a hardware revision, adding some missing features, like a middle button, and “maybe” a display to the device, making it easier to visualise settings, etc…
My main limitations came from the Seeed Studio Xiao RP2040 Module. While super tiny and compact, the module only has access to 11 GPIO pins on the RP2040 chip. Most of these were already in use, connected to buttons etc. I would thus have to find an I2C IO expander that will be supported by CircuitPython and have a suitably small footprint. That way, I could free up many of the valuable GPIO pins on the Xiao RP2040 for other purposes.
What did I use?
My initial goto chip was the MCP23017, with 16 GPIO pins. But after some more thinking, I settled on the MCP23008, which has only 8 GPIO lines. I2C bus breakout headers to allow for expansion, as well as access to all the unused GPIO pins on the XIAO RP2040, were also added. The Rotary encoder was once again included, as it could later be used for selecting Menu options etc.
What is the current status of the project?
The revision 2.00 hardware works as expected, with a few issues.CircuitPython has an issue with rotary encoders connected to IO expanders. I don’t understand why that would be the case, but wrote my basic routine to handle the encoder, which at this time, is only used for scrolling. ( I have still got to decide if a display would be needed)
As far as settings are concerned, I have only implemented a sort of “mouse speed” feature that determines how fast or slow ( for better accuracy ) the pointer moves. This is currently controlled by the encoder button, on a cycling loop, with different colours on the NeoPixel as visual feedback on the current speed selected. USB connectivity at computer startup and/or resuming from a suspend operation is still a major problem. This means that you have to physically reset the device after every resume from suspend, or after starting your computer. From what I can see in the CircuitPython documentation, it is possible to detect USB connectivity. That part works. From there, It seems that once USB connectivity is lost, CircuitPython goes into some sort of unknown state, and no further code is executed, thus making a software reset not executing…I have an idea that it has got something to do with the HID Mouse mode or something ???? For now, I am happy to just hit a reset button to continue…
Another big issue is a suitable enclosure. Revision 2.00 PCB was not designed to be placed into an enclosure, mainly because I have so far been quite unsuccessful in finding a suitable one. My 3D design skills are also quite lacking, so designing something from scratch won’t do either. I have decided to sort out all the hardware and firmware issues first, find an enclosure and then modify the PCB layout to fit that.”