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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

For someone who kinda wants this stuff but doesn't feel great about spending 200 bucks for 15 buttons and all the garbage that goes with...

an idea I had last week seeing this article is to buy a USB 10-key numpad from a pawn shop, and use something like kmonad[0] to map key presses from that device to specific actions.

Reuse some existing tech, and you can just tape over buttons. It's not exactly the same product for obvious reasons, but I feel like you can do some magic with statusbars and toasts in scripts to get something decent.

[0]: https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad

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I have a Logitech G13 for this. I don't think Logitech have sold them in about 10 years, but they're wonderful devices. A bit of paper with a picture and clear tape does wonders.

I used a RP2040 macropad from Adafruit [0] to play with this- I use mine as numpad on occasion, but can also use it for Zoom controls, media volume/next/speed/etc, or Photoshop actions.

[0]: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128

Pimoroni also make a Macropad based on the 2040. It's a little simpler in design but works on the same basis.

> For someone who kinda wants this stuff but doesn't feel great about spending 200 bucks for 15 buttons and all the garbage that goes with...

Streamdeck goes occasionally on sale, so it's more like $100 for the small deck if you can wait.

> an idea I had last week seeing this article is to buy a USB 10-key numpad from a pawn shop, and use something like kmonad[0] to map key presses from that device to specific actions.

One can also use just any old normal keyboard. For a while I used a small 60% with self written python-script to rebind keys to my own demand. But the benefit of the streamdecks lcd-displays was in the end to tempting.

Anyway, I think any OS is capable of rebinding a complete device. So it's really just a matter of desk-estate and ergonomic which device one prefers.

I did exactly this during lockdown 1 in the UK to allow me to easily control OBD for online guitar lessons (I used 3 cameras plus on screen pdfs in various combinations). It worked well (I did it because no one had stream decks in stock at the time), but it was pretty fiddly to set up or modify.

I now have a steam deck xl, and it's light years better. Obviously 20x the cost, but well worth it in my opinion.

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