Things to do with a chipKIT™ Lenny and a QuickIO. No. 1: Autoclicker

This is the first part of a new series entitled "Things to do with a chipKIT™ Lenny and a QuickIO". In it, I'm going to be exploring some of the cool things you could do in just a matter of seconds using the two boards combined.

This first one is an Autoclicker.

In my spare time (of which I have plenty, obviously...) I find myself playing a number of web-based "clicker" games. Things like Cookie Clicker, etc. And after a while, I find I need to replace the microswitch in my mouse, or my finger decides to fall off and roll under the desk, which is a real pain.

So why not make something that will do the clicking for me? And do it a darn sight faster than my slow index finger can...?

By grabbing a Lenny and slapping a QuickIO on it you have all the controls you could need for configurable clicking. Add to that the new USB stack in chipKIT-core 2.x.x and in just a few lines of code, you will be clicking faster than anyone else.

To this end we will use the Mouse object to emulate a USB mouse. And we will simply ask it to click. It's as simple as that.  One command is all it takes:

Mouse.click();

All the rest of the code is for turning it on and off and for setting the speed of clicking. I may as well make use of the LEDs on the QuickIO for some simple visual feedback as well, so I can see how fast it's clicking.

So here's what I came up with:

/*
 * Simple Auto-Clicker for QuickIO
 *
 * Button A0 controls the clicking. Press it and clicking
 * starts. Release it and clicking stops.
 *
 * Potentiometer A4 controls the delay between clicks in
 * the range 0 to 255 milliseconds.
 *
 * The 8 LEDs count up one per click looping after 8 clicks
 * to provide visual feedback.
 */

#include <Mouse.h>

void setup() {
    pinMode(A0, INPUT_PULLUP);

    for (uint8_t i = 2; i < 10; i++) {
        pinMode(i, OUTPUT);
    }

    Mouse.begin();
}

void loop() {
    static uint8_t clicks = 0;

    if (digitalRead(A0) == LOW) {
        Mouse.click();
        clicks++;

        if (clicks == 8) { clicks = 0; }

        for (uint8_t i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
            digitalWrite(2 + i, i <= clicks ? HIGH : LOW);
        }
        delay(analogRead(A4) >> 2);
    }
}

That's pretty simple stuff, really. Start out by configuring one button as an input, and the LEDs as outputs. Then, if the button is pressed, click the mouse and delay for a while depending on the position of one of the potentiometers. Count the clicks and display them on the LEDs, looping after you get all the LEDs on.