Arduino Word Processor

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello all,

Now I know I there have been a lot of posts on this subject, but I was wondering about it for my needs. Now I have been doing Arduino for a while now (2 years) and am not afraid of complexity. I want to build a desktop word processor (So hardware size isn’t a problem). I was wondering if I could use a PS2 keyboard would work with a display (Maybe a large OLED, or LCD) and saving to a SD card. And if a Arduino Mega could be used. What I am mostly looking for is hardware suggestions for a tight budget 100 NZD bucks(US 59) , that would work with the megas capabilities. Or maybe coding a ESP32 S3 or similar with Arduino. I already have an Arduino Uno, Mega, Nano. (And I can pick up a ESP32 for cheap). Any guidance would be helpful. (I don't expect code or anything, just looking for hardware that would work, so I can build it myself)

2

I'd use a RasPi for that purpose.

3

Yes I would agree with that. Even the Mega has so little internal memory that it is insufficient to hold a single A4 page of words.

4

Thanks for the info!

Looked into the price of a raspberry pi. It is too expensive for my budget. Could I use a ESP32 S3 with 448kb of RAM?

5

All I need it to do is write, save, and open files as .txt

6

Where are you writing and saving these files to / from?

7

A SD card module with SPI communication.

8

Ok that should work.

However,

I am not at all sure that would work.

9

Can you please explain why?

There is a library of code to interface with this type of keyboard. (Does it not work with the ESP32?)

10

Thanks for All your time and effort

11

I do not know.

This is probably a third party library so it would not surprise me if it didn't work.

12

Hi @dukedabang

I think you missed the school lesson where the purpose of microcontrollers versus general purpose computers was explained to the class.

Word processing is a use case for a general purpose computer, not a microcontroller.

Monitoring sensors and controlling machinery are use cases for microcontrollers, not general purpose computers.

13

Thanks for your help!

The least I can do is try so I'll see what happens. (Ethier big face fall or big success) And yes I know that I just partly wanted to see if it was possible with Arduino and to see if I could re-create that massive bench-hogger of a traditional word 80's and 90's word processor.

14

There are several models of Pi which are less expensive than a Mega.

With the Mega you will need a shield to plug in your keyboard and an SD card module. Add those to the price of a Mega and that will be less expensive than several Pi models.

15

Thanks I'll have a better look!

16

just a thought

In the era before word processors there were file editors - vim, emacs - and before that there were line editors like edlin, ed

Such a line editor would have just one line of text (100 bytes?) in RAM.
(So still some RAM for caching some lines)
Many actions were done with file IO, including the use of temporary files (e.g. block copy / paste).

17

Edlin at least came later. Emacs was spelled
Eight Megabytes Almost Continuously Swapping.

Line editors are memory efficient only with fixed length lines. Else the remainder of the file has to be shifted whenever a line length changes.

For a microcontroller target the topic definitely should be changed into Text Editor.

18

You could do this on a mini PC - such as those with built in display ? Not exactly what you want to do , but you could easily do it .

Worth having google and investigation into what others have tried - looks “ very hard “ to me - even getting a reasonable readable display that you can easily read and hold enough text .

Word grinder ?

19

Wireless keyboard and a smartphone. These would actually work.

20

Thanks for the help!
I dipped into my savings and bought a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with a case with fan and a heatsink for the CPU and RAM. (I got the 8GB RAM version)