New multi-tap keypad

After a Phi-panel user (Daniel) has requested for more symbols on the multi-tap keyboard, I added all symbols to the keypad, why not? 🙂

Now the keypad has 7 symbols for each numeric key except for 9, with 6 symbols only. The symbols such as greater and less, brackets, parentheses, and curly braces, are all symmetrically located so if you get used to the pad, say memorized “(” is 5 presses on key “4”, then the “)” will be also 5 presses on the next key, “5”. Again all + – * / are located together on key 1.

On HD44780 displays, the ‘~’ and the ‘\’ are displayed as right arrow and the Japanese Yen (HD probably means Hitachi display). That’s unfortunate. Hope that would be a big deal for most of us.

New keypad:

Old keypad:

To update your panel firmware, please go to the google code download page to download the firmware and follow the steps in the wiki page at the code site for updating. If you have questions, leave them here so I can answer them. Thanks.

http://code.google.com/p/phi-panel/wiki/updateFirmware