Details

Tiny Mute Button

After much frustration during the pandemic with meeting solutions and their always shifting and hidden mute buttons. I decided to fix the issue for me and my team.

This little Hardware project is perfect for beginners and very easy to assemble.

Tools needed

Soldering Iron
3D Printer (alternatively use an online printing service like shapeways)

How does it work?

The Microcontroller on the PCB simulates a keyboard. There are two ways to interact with the button, pressing the switch and touching the small capacitive surface on the back. Pressing the Switch will toggle its internal state and send either a key command used to mute or unmute the microphone. An on board LED represents its internal state.

In plain text: when you press it it goes red and your microphone is set to 0 volume, after pressing it again it goes out and sets your microphone volume to 100.

The capacitive surface on the back toggles the color wheel mode which is just a colorful effect which endlessly cycles all colors its RGB LED is capable of showing. Of course you can just touch the surface again to toggle this off. Also the red mute indicator state will still continue to overrule this.

Files

MuteButtonStand.stl

3D Model for the Mute button stand

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 839.83 kB - 06/09/2022 at 20:33

Download

Build Instructions

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1
Assemble the Hardware
1. Slot switch onto pcb
2. Solder the switch in place
3. Mount key cap onto switch
4. 3D print the PCB Shoe
5. Slot PCB into Shoe
2
Flash the Firmware
1. Setup Arduino
  Detailed instructions https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neokey-trinkey/arduino-ide-setup
  or here https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neokey-trinkey/using-with-arduino-ide
2. Choose the Adafruit Neokey Trinkkey board from the boards list
3. Copy code from here: https://gist.github.com/mostley/da966940246e018220a432265f47284f
4. and paste into the Arduino IDE
5. Connect the board
6. Press Upload
3
Configure the Software (OSX)
1. Open Automate (Press: ⌘ + spacebar, Type:Automator.app, Press: Enter)
2. Create an new Automator action
3. Create a new Quick Action by selecting the Cog icon and then click Choose

4. In the Quick action wizard choose: "no input" for the "Workflow receives" dropdown

5. Then choose "Run AppleScript" in the Action List on the left

6. In the new Run AppleScript Textarea replace the content with "set volume input volume 0"

7. Save your Workflow and name it mute_microphone

8. Repeat steps 2 - 6 but use the script: "set volume input volume 100"

9. Save and Name the second Workflow "unmute_microphone"

10. in order for the Automator to be able to control your microphone you have to grant it permissions

11. open the System Preferences and go To Security & Privacy

12. Navigate to Accessibility

13. Unlock the Screen (lock symbol on the lower left)

14. Next press the + Button under the selection box on the right

15. Navigate to the Applications folder in the new Finder Dialog and choose Automator.app by selecting it and clicking Open

16. Ensure that the Automater is now in the list and has a checkmark in front of it

17. Now that Automator is allowed to modify your microphone we can setup your keyboard shortcut, for that open the Keyboard settings in the System Preferences

18. Navigate to Shortcuts and choose Services on the left, then scroll down until you find mute_microphone and unmute_microphone

19. Make sure both are checked and

20. set the Shortcut for Mute to: Ctrl + Option + Shift + Command + M

21. as well as the Shortcut for Unmute to: Ctrl + Option + Shift + Command + U