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I’ve been wanting a macropad for a while, but to be a really useful complement to the keyboard this would need a display. There appear to exist some OLED soluti

I’ve been wanting a macropad for a while, but to be a really useful complement to the keyboard this would need a display. There appear to exist some OLED solutions, but iirc they were very pricey and probably didn’t support Linux very well. Unfortunately nobody makes what might be a cheap display-enabled solution, namely a macropad with a regular, large LCD character display matrix, with buttons arranged on the side to each line, like a quickdial. This is probably not super hard to realize with Arduino (though I would be unsure which interface to use; possibly serial over USB? Then implement an evdev driver?). Getting it nicely looking and sturdy would be much harder, though. So if anyone is going to market something like this let me know. ;)

robinhartley94 9y ago
Your comment has made me think about putting an LCD display on this. Like you say, with it being an Arduino, it's just a matter of wiring up a 16x2 LCD display and using the inbuilt library. Nothing too tricky there. In fact, the hardest bit is just designing a 3D printed case for it but that will only take an afternoon. I will look at adding this to the crowdfunding as a stretch goal.
- eigengrau 9y ago
  Well my thought is, to be really useful, there would have to be one line of LCD characters for each button. My ideal macropad would be columnar, with the display in the center, and a row of buttons laid out on the sides. With a keypad style macropad, I don’t think I would find much practicality in just a single, global 16x2 display. Whatever is shown there could just as well be shown on-screen. What would water my mouth is something like this, but as a programmable PC peripheral: http://www.evenflow.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EXP39.jpg http://www.evenflow.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EXP39.j... This is a fancier LCD tech, but dot-matrix would work just as well. A man can dream though. A man can dream.

robinhartley94 9y ago

Your comment has made me think about putting an LCD display on this. Like you say, with it being an Arduino, it's just a matter of wiring up a 16x2 LCD display and using the inbuilt library. Nothing too tricky there. In fact, the hardest bit is just designing a 3D printed case for it but that will only take an afternoon. I will look at adding this to the crowdfunding as a stretch goal.

eigengrau 9y ago
Well my thought is, to be really useful, there would have to be one line of LCD characters for each button. My ideal macropad would be columnar, with the display in the center, and a row of buttons laid out on the sides. With a keypad style macropad, I don’t think I would find much practicality in just a single, global 16x2 display. Whatever is shown there could just as well be shown on-screen. What would water my mouth is something like this, but as a programmable PC peripheral: http://www.evenflow.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EXP39.jpg http://www.evenflow.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EXP39.j... This is a fancier LCD tech, but dot-matrix would work just as well. A man can dream though. A man can dream.