Other Control Devices
The main hardware components used to control Peppy player are: touchscreen, rotary encoders and remote control. The details related to this devices were discussed already in the corresponding chapters. The other devices which can be used to control player include:
USB mouse can be connected to any spare USB connector on the Raspberry Pi. As this is standard device it will be automatically recognized and configured by the system without any manual intervention. The mouse connected to the Peppy player is useful only during debugging/troubleshooting if because of some reasons there is no network access to the player. In all other cases it is useless as there are more convenient methods to control player - touchscreen, remote control and rotary encoders.
Another advantage of the mouse is the fact that all touchscreen events are eventually converted into mouse events. Therefore during software development there is no need to work with real touchscreen. For example you can develop your software for touchscreen on Windows machine using the mouse and then just deploy your software on Raspberry Pi with touchscreen. The program won't need any changes. All event handlers written for mouse will work the same way for the touchscreen.
Any USB keyboard can be also connected to the spare USB connector on the Raspberry Pi. And it will be also automatically recognized and configured by the OS. A keyboard as well as mouse is helpful only during debugging and development. During regular usage there is no need to connect a keyboard to the Peppy player. Though the Peppy software handles the keyboard key strokes as well.
A microphone should be added to your system in order to use Voice Assistant which allows to control Peppy player by voice commands. Depending on the microphone model it can be connected either through mic input connector (e.g. on Windows machines) or through USB connector (Raspberry Pi). The image bellow shows two microphone types which I used for the project. Any other microphone model can be used as well.
Like a mouse and keyboard a microphone is also standard input device and doesn't need any additional configuration.