Control outputs (e.g: servo motor) with the press of a keyboard button

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

Hi, I'm a beginner and I know very little about C++ language and I'd need help with this project I'm trying to make.

My aim is to learn how to control any output using the PC keyboard as a "controller".

I'm planning on buinding a robot arm and I tought about using the keyboard buttons to make the servo motors move forward or backward. For example, using the " serial.read() " function, i want the servos to react when they receive a specific keystroke, however not by typing for example "forward" in the serial monitor, despite just by holding a key on the keyboard and watching the robot arm move; for example, I hold the up arrow key on the keyboard and the arm goes forward.
Is such thing possible? Thanks in advance to anyone who will help me! :smiley:

2

do you have code to read a keyboard?

3

Which Arduino board to you have ?

4

This code will read keyboard repeats from a terminal program like TeraTerm or CoolTerm via the Arduino USB Serial

// readOneChar.ino
// Reads one char cmds from Serial
// https://www.forward.com.au/pfod/ArduinoProgramming/SoftwareSolutions/index.html
// Pros: Extremely Simple, Non-blocking and Robust
// Cons: Nothing really. You can do a lot with 52 one char cmds (A..Z,a..z)

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  for (int i = 10; i > 0; i--) {
    Serial.print(' '); Serial.print(i);
    delay(500);
  }
  Serial.println();
}

void loop() {
  char c = Serial.read(); // note read() returns an int, char c = converts it to a char
  if (c != -1) {  // read() return -1 if there is nothing to be read.
    // got a char handle it
    Serial.println(c);
    // <<< add your code to to handle 'f' for forward 'r' for reverse etc
  }
}
5

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