Page Turner Mk II

Using an LCD monitor + computer for sheet music display along with the first version of Page Turner has turned out to be a much nicer experience than struggling to page turn manually. However, the iPad lacks a serial port yet it makes for a great portable sheet music display.

Enter Page Turner Mk II, a USB device that plugs into the iPad's camera connection kit and identifies itself as a USB keyboard device. It sends a page forward/backward keypress depending on which foot pedal is pressed.

The USB port shown in the photos is used to connect a standard USB cable to the iPad via the camera connection kit, as far as the iPad is concerned this is a normal USB keyboard. The two jack sockets on the opposite side of the box accept 3/4" foot pedal jacks to allowing both forward and reverse page turns.

Holding the "forward" pedal down and plugging the device into a a PC will cause the bootloader to enter flashing mode, allowing new firmware to be downloaded to the device.

Internally the device makes use of a PIC 18F4550 which includes a USB module and corresponding stack which avoids interfacing with a separate FTDI chip. A lower pin count PIC could have been used, but I had the 18F4550 spare at the time. Hardware wise, the device is pretty simple with just a few decoupling capacitors, a crystal to drive the PIC and interface connections for the two switches plus USB socket.

Since making this, the AirTurn bluetooth model is now on sale in the EU, I had planned to buy one when they became available, however I'm now tempted to make Page Turner Mk III with bluetooth instead :)