Raspberry Pi 400 and Pi 500as a USB HID Keyboard & Mouse

Hook your Pi 400 up to your PC somehow, using a USB Type-C cable into the power port of the Pi. Anker make good ones- I used a 3m white one for my tests.

Our USB-C to USB-A is great if you're using a USB-A port (but make sure it's a high power one): https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/usb-c-to-usb-a-cable-1m-black

A Raspberry Pi Mouse is also supported if plugged in, eg: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-mouse?variant=29390982119507

⚠️ The Pi 400 and Pi 500 are power hungry, in some cases your computer may not supply enough current, or trigger a low voltage warning.

You may need to inject additional power from an official supply, using something like this: https://thepihut.com/products/usb-c-data-power-splitter

Contents

• Quickstart (Ish)
  • Mouse Support
• Building & Contributing
  • Building
  • Custom Mouse/Keyboard Devices

Quickstart (Ish)

Add dtoverlay=dwc2 to /boot/config.txt

Reboot!

sudo modprobe libcomposite

Grab the latest pi400kb for your system from releases: https://github.com/Gadgetoid/pi400kb/releases

chmod +x pi400kb

sudo ./pi400kb

✨ YOUR PI 400 IS NOW A FREAKING KEYBOARD & MOUSE FOR YOUR PC WHAAAAT!? ✨

Your keyboard input will be detached from your Pi while it's forwarded to your host computer.

Press Ctrl + Raspberry to grab/release your keyboard and mouse, switching between local use and USB.

Press Ctrl + Shift + Raspberry (on the grabbed keyboard) to exit.

Mouse Support

Pi 400 KB supports the official Raspberry Pi Mouse VID:PID = 093a:2510 by default, but other mice should work.

Autostart

sudo cp pi400kb /usr/bin/pi400kb
sudo systemctl edit --force --full pi400kb.service

Add the contents of the pi400kb.service file.

Start the service and check its status:

sudo systemctl start pi400kb.service
sudo systemctl status pi400kb.service

Enable start on boot if it's okay:

sudo systemctl enable pi400kb.service

Finally copy pi400kb.conf into /etc/modules-load.d/:

sudo cp pi400kb.conf /etc/modules-load.d/

Building & Contributing

Building

sudo apt install libconfig-dev git cmake
git clone https://github.com/Gadgetoid/pi400kb
cd pi400kb
git submodule update --init
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Building for Pi 500

Replace the cmake .. command above with:

cmake .. -DKEYBOARD_VID=0x2e8a -DKEYBOARD_PID=0x0010 -DKEYBOARD_DEV=/dev/input/by-id/usb-Raspberry_Pi_Ltd_Pi_500_Keyboard-event-kbd

(thanks to 57r31 for the above command)

Custom Mouse/Keyboard Devices

CMake accepts the following build arguments to customise the VID/PID and device path for the mouse/keyboard:

• KEYBOARD_VID - Keyboard Vendor ID, default: 0x04d9
• KEYBOARD_PID - Keyboard Product ID, default: 0x0007
• KEYBOARD_DEV - Keyboard device path, default: /dev/input/by-id/usb-_Raspberry_Pi_Internal_Keyboard-event-kbd
• MOUSE_VID - Mouse Vendor ID, default: 0x093a
• MOUSE_PID - Mouse Product ID, default: 0x2510
• MOUSE_DEV - Mouse device path, default: /dev/input/by-id/usb-PixArt_USB_Optical_Mouse-event-mouse

Supply these arguments when configuring with CMake, eg:

cmake .. -DMOUSE_DEV="/dev/input/by-id/usb-EndGameGear_XM1_Gaming_Mouse_0000000000000000-event-mouse" -DMOUSE_VID=0x3367 -DMOUSE_PID=0x1903

Info

This project started out life as a gist - https://gist.github.com/Gadgetoid/5a8ceb714de8e630059d30612503653f

Thank you to all the people who dropped by with kind words, suggestions and improvements.