Use Your Keyboard As a Mouse

If you find it difficult to move the mouse or wish to have an alternative way to the mouse using the arrow keys on the numeric keypad follow the below steps.
Microsoft Windows users can enable the accessibility feature to move the mouse using their arrow keys by following the below steps. 

1. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel.
2. Within the Control Panel open Accessibility Options or Ease of Access
3. Click the Mouse tab.

1. Check the "Use Mouse Keys" check box.
2. If you wish to increase the speed or change any other settings, click on the Settings button.
3. Click Apply and then close out of the box.

After performing the above steps you will be able to used the numeric keypad as a mouse moving up, down, left, right, and all the diagonals. In addition, you may also use the center "5" key as a left click. 

Note: You must have the Number lock on for this feature to work by default. This can be changed through the settings.

How to: Make your own USB OTG cable for an Android smartphon

Some high-end Android phones and most of today’s Android tablets support USB OTG (On-The-Go). This enables users to connect a standard USB input

Some high-end Android phones and most of today’s Android tablets support USB OTG (On-The-Go). This enables users to connect standard USB input devices such as keyboards and mice, or even extend storage using a regular USB pen drive. However, only a few Android tablets are equipped with a USB host port (Type A Female connector), while no mobile phone is. Some mobile phone manufacturers ship USB host ports with their handsets while others have them as optional accessories, usually at a premium price. In order to connect an Android phone to a standard USB device, you need to use a micro (or mini) USB to USB Type A Female convertor, but this should also be an OTG cable. A mini USB OTG cable is available in the market and can cost you around Rs.150 – Rs.300, but finding vendors who actually sell it is not easy. The ones that are available are not guaranteed to work. The case of the micro USB OTG cables is also similar. USB connector types In this workshop, we show you how you can build yourself an OTG cable (be it micro or mini) at almost no cost. Do note that the procedure mentioned here will involve hacking into your existing cable, and even a small blunder can potentially damage your cable or the device you use it with. Proceed with extreme caution as we take no responsibility for any damages to your device. Do this at your own risk. Furthermore, do take note of your Android specs and check carefully to see if it has OTG capabilities before trying out this workshop. Phones don’t need to be rooted as the stock ROM usually supports OTG in compatible handsets. Those who have installed third-party developer ROMs should check with the developers if the OTG feature is enabled in the kernel. Slicing the connector sleeve Since all phones usually ship with cables, we suggest you opt for a second one from the market to create the OTG cable. For those who are not able to find a similar cable, this workshop will also show you how you can use the same cable for regular and OTG modes. In the following procedure, we'll be using a micro USB cable that we’ll convert to be used with USB OTG. Requirements: A standard mini or micro USB cable Some small, thin wires A sharp knife Soldering iron and solder wire Wire cutter Hot glue or any quick glue Firstly, we need to slice open the micro USB connector end very carefully using a knife. The idea here is to cut the outer sleeve (length-wise) into two halves to reveal the connector inside. Be careful not to destroy the outer sleeve as we shall be glueing it back on after the work is done.  A miniature switch After the sleeve is taken apart, some of you might find a whitish plastic mould covering the connector’s leads. This is for strengthening the cable to connector contacts, and its use depends from manufacturer to manufacturer. Those who have this mould will also have to cut through it to reveal the connector leads. On revealing the connector leads, you will find that it has five leads and not four. The usual four are power, data, data and ground, while the non-connected lead is sense. This lead needs to be grounded before connecting the cable for the phone to switch to OTG mode and sense a USB device connected to the interface. The difference - circuit Given above is the pin-out diagram for the micro and mini USB connector. Pin 1: VCC Pin 2: data Pin 3: data Pin 4 Not connected / unused Pin 5: ground In order to get the phone to go into OTG mode, we need to short Pins 4 and 5. You can either choose to short them permanently by soldering them together or soldering two wires to each of the pins and leading those outwards from the connector, which can then be soldered to a small switch. Using the switch, we can switch the cable between normal and OTG whenever needed. If you choose to short it permanently, you will have to cut off the connector at the other end (The Type A Male USB connector) and solder a Type B Female connector to accommodate a USB device. You can also choose to have a male to female USB convertor at that end. Here's what we did: The connector and the sleeve We chose to connect a small switch to the leads at Pin 4 and Pin 5 and glue the switch to the wire itself. This way, we could use the cable for both regular and OTG purposes. Next, we glued the connector sleeves back carefully using hot glue. Now the other end of the cable, which has a male USB connector, needed to be converted into a female. For this, we opted for the scrapped USB rear panel connector of a desktop PC. We soldered the wires of the USB connector to create a USB female-to-female convertor. Once done, we now have an OTG cable ready for use. Just to ensure we do not end up frying our phone, we used a multimeter to double-check any cable shortings during the soldering. Lastly, we connected the OTG cable to our Android (the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman) and used a USB mouse with it. If your cable worked for you and your phone is compatible with OTG features, you can also connect a USB hub to the OTG cable and use a USB keyboard, mouse and pen drive together on the same Android device. Micro USB Pin points By following this workshop you can now conveniently use a pointing device to control your apps and games, use a keyboard to type e-mails and messages or use a pen drive to store or access media or large files. If you are lucky enough to find a micro USB connector and a Type A Female USB connector at an electronics store though, you can make your own OTG cable for under Rs.100.

How to - Extend Wi-Fi coverage and eliminate dead zones

Most users having a wireless router at home or office usually complain of dead zones and low wireless connectivity ...

Most users having a wireless router at home or office usually complain of dead zones and low wireless connectivity in certain areas. This usually happens when you have a large room or multiple rooms, where a single wireless router cannot serve the entire area effectively. Upgrading to Wi-Fi ‘n’ routers or installing high-gain antennas could solve the problem, but the chances are remote when it comes to accessing the signals in a larger area or if you have many walls in between you and your router, especially. Adding Wi-fi signal repeaters can help, but this increases the overall cost of the hardware.  A simpler and slightly cheaper solution would be installing additional wireless routers in other rooms, which will solve the problem. In this workshop, we show you how to configure multiple routers on the same network. Using this trick, you can have one single SSID throughout the entire network and stay in the same subnet too. Before you proceed, make sure you have an extra router handy with you. Any basic router would do since the goal is to spread the Wi-Fi network to a specific part of the house and not the whole house. You can invest in a few cheap Wi-Fi ‘g’ or ‘n’ routers, depending on how big your house is. Choosing the right channel is very important Let’s begin with an example to make you understand the network a bit better. You have a large home, which spreads across two or more rooms or floors. You have one wireless router, which is connected to the Internet gateway (either a DSL modem or a direct connection through your cable guy) and is placed in your living room. You can access this wireless network in your living room with ease, but your bedroom, kitchen, terrace or garden area has a very weak signal or you are unable to even get the network there. All you need is an additional router or more routers, which will pick up the primary network from another room and extend it further into its area. We shall take an example of a scenario where three routers are required to cover the area in the living room, the bedroom and the garden. Let’s call the primary wireless router in the living room as LR1, BR1 for the wireless router in the bedroom and GR1 for the one in the garden. Now we assume that LR1 is configured by default with SSID ‘RAHUL’ and a secure WPA2 password. Let’s assume IP address is 192.168.0.1 and the DHCP server is enabled.  All clients now connecting to this router will be given IP addresses by this DHCP server on LR1 from 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3, and so on. Log in to your router using that IP in a browser and open the settings page.  Here, set the wireless network channel to ‘Channel 1’. Now, dig around a bit till you find the option to increase the antenna gain, and set it to the highest possible strength. Save and restart the router. LR1 is now configured. Configuring LR1 Now let’s configure the second router BR1, which is placed in the bedroom. Once again, connect the router to a PC via the Ethernet or Wi-Fi network for configuration. Open the setup page of the router and start the setup wizard. Configure the WAN IP (Internet gateway) settings as ‘Dynamic’. This will receive an IP address from the primary router automatically. Next move on to configure the wireless network details, such as SSID and security password. Now enter the SSID the same as the primary router LR1 (in this case ‘RAHUL’). Enter the security type (in this case WPA2) and password, which is again identical to LR1. Next, set the channel number as channel 6, so that there is no overlapping of the channels between LR1 and BR1. Increase the antennal signal strength to maximum. Next, move on to the LAN settings and disable the DHCP server. Save the settings and the router will restart. Now BR1 is also configured.  Now that both, LR1 and BR1 have been configured, GR1 also needs to be configured with the same settings as BR1, except for the channel number, which needs to be set as channel 11. If you want to configure more routers for additional coverage, you can follow the same settings procedure as that of BR1 and GR1, but keep in mind to decrease the channel overlapping as minimum as possible. A reference chart of the channel numbers and their overlapping range is given below.  Make sure to secure your network Once all the wireless routers are configured, all you need is to daisy chain the routers with each other using an Ethernet cable. For our setup, simply connect the WAN port of GR1 to one of the LAN ports of BR1 using an Ethernet cable and connect the WAN port of BR1 to any LAN port of LR1 using another Ethernet cable. Now once the entire network is switched on, LR1 will serve an IP address to BR1 and GR1 and to everyone connected to any of the three routers connected either via an Ethernet cable or via the wireless network. In this whole network, there is only one DHCP server, which will keep all the clients connected in the same subnet and since the SSID is identical on all the routers, one can roam between any rooms without having to switch the wireless network while moving. The final setup You can increase or decrease the wireless antenna gain according to your choice, depending on the coverage area needed in the room. You can also keep the wireless channels set to automatic, if you wish and the router will automatically select the best suited channel by itself. But it is advised to keep the wireless channel numbers as specified in this article to decrease channel clutter and signal drops. The image here shows multiple routers used together with different channel numbers, so that they don’t overlap each other. Yes, we know that wiring multiple routers with an Ethernet cable in different rooms can be a bit expensive and difficult, too. But this is the only way you can get maximum network speed and connectivity. If you want to compromise on expenses, then you could install DDWRT firmware (if your router is compatible) on the additional routers and set them up to connect to each other wirelessly. But since the wireless strength from LR1 would be weak, the signal would only degrade till you reached the last router in the chain.