Raspberry Pi Pico Sarcasm Injector Hilariously Converts Text As It's Typed

sarcasm converter
Sometimes a dose of sarcasm is just what the doctor ordered. Twitter user Ben S recently developed a “sarcasm converter” for keyboards with two rather cheap Raspberry Pi Pico boards. One can implement a sarcasm mode with his invention with a literal flip of the switch.

One can activate the sarcasm converter by flipping a switch on a black box marked “SaRcAsM.” This box can connect to any ol’ keyboard you have lying around. According to Ben S, “it uses man-in-the-middle attack and decodes the keyboard's button presses from the real keyboard.” It toggles between lowercase and uppercase letters so that any sentence you type oozes sarcasm and derision similar in style to the Spongebob meme.

The sarcasm converter was very inexpensive to make. It relies on two Raspberry Pi Pico boards that cost $4 USD a piece. Ben S noted that one Raspberry Pi PIco board “acts as a USB HID keyboard device for the computer and one acts as a USB host to read the inputs from the physical keyboard. The host then communicates with the device via UART what the keystroke was.”

The Raspberry Pi Pico board was launched in January 2021 and those who love to tinker have found many unique uses for it. Its low price tag allows people to take risks with their designs without substantial financial investment. YouTube user "stacksmashing" was able to use a Raspberry Pi Pico board to convert a Nintendo Game Boy into a bitcoin miner. Hriday Barot showed off their own interesting invention with the boards on their blog. They combined a Raspberry Pi Pico board with a MPU-6050 module to control the game Asphalt 8: Airborne with just their hands. It is interesting to see what kinds of unique projects people can come up with with a simple Raspberry Pi Pico board.

What can the sarcasm converter be used for? Being sarcastic of course. This is the ideal device if you are dealing with an annoying person but find switching between lowercase and uppercase letters to be tedious. One will naturally want to practice discretion if they are inspired by Ben S and decide to build and use their own sarcasm converter.

Image from Ben S via Twitter