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I've always wanted to build a big rig of buttons to surround my pc monitor that I could program for various functions I do every day. When working on Bioshock

I've always wanted to build a big rig of buttons to surround my pc monitor that I could program for various functions I do every day. When working on Bioshock I had a strip of buttons that could be programmed to send keystrokes like it was a keyboard. I was working in Unreal Engine on the Xbox 360. I could plug these keys it into the dev kit, and with one click could enter all kinds of obscure console commands I could never remember. Was great. Update: was one of these. https://xkeys.com/ https://xkeys.com/

dkersten 6y ago
I have a StreamDeck[1] that I use for various random things. There's an open source driver for it too that you can drive from Python[2], letting you run Python code when a button is pressed. You can do some cool stuff with it (eg I've used mine to make HTTP requests on button press) [1] https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck [2] https://github.com/abcminiuser/python-elgato-streamdeck https://github.com/abcminiuser/python-elgato-streamdeck
- sundvor 6y ago
  Ah, yes - writing our comments in parallel. :) The SD is great. Thanks for the link to Python code, I'll check it out.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    Haha, yes, indeed! The python library is quite easy to use and lets you go beyond what the official application allows (plus, I use it on Linux). I actually looked at those XKeys ones first, but IIRC they were a little too expensive for what I wanted (yes, the StreamDeck isn't that cheap either, but its easier to use out of the box) StreamDeck is great for non-streaming tasks. I'm very happy with it.
sundvor 6y ago
XKeys looks nice! I've got a StreamDeck XL mounted under my monitor, in a button box; its capabilities as a macro machine are vastly underrated, although a few people are catching on that it's not just for live content creation. It's absolutely amazing when doing remote work to be able to fire up OBS Studio, the meeting join, microphone control etc in a single click - and I have that just on one page, along with other meeting controls such as camera scenes. Another for VS Studio, there's integration with that which is quite useful to send commands directly. I have all my most of ten work websites on buttons of their own. As mentioned, I also have button boxes however I'm still working out what the best way of sending commands would be; Joy2Key seem to mess up alt keys sometimes, making it sticky. When it worked it was nice, imagine adjusting text size just twisting a rotary for example.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
My company builds and works with industrial automation, custom CNC machines, and industrial robots. I've observed a shift from purely button-and-neon operated panels from early PLC or relay logic machines, to multifunction keys on the human-machine interface display (HMI) before touchscreens, to a fitful few years when people thought it was a good idea to build machines with VB6 and various serial to digital IO adapters, to purely touchscreen-driven machines with one legally-mandated physical emergency stop button (about when I arrived in the industry, the other machines were mostly historic beasts I've occasionally been charged with maintaining), and back towards multifunction keys. There are usually a few dedicated buttons and indicators for common operations (reset, cycle start, control power on, feed hold, feed rate override, etc), that still makes sense most of the time. I really think multifunction keys are the best of both worlds. As the author of this piece describes, the multifunction display with 20 keys around the outside (or, for CNCs, 10 keys across the bottom of the monitor and 10 off to the right, in a 1-4-4-1 spacing so you can feel exactly which button you're hovering over while you're staring unblinking at a cutter chewing through 5-figure assemblies) is a good compromise. It takes some serious concentrated planning to design a set of keys that are intuitive (top to scroll up, bottom to scroll down, one dedicated for enter, two for context-specific operations, etc), but it gives you the freedom to design relatively shallow but featureful menu systems that you can memorize and get tactile feedback to operate with confidence.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  Can anyone recommend reading about UX design for these kinds of combined digital/physical interfaces.
  - twiftly 6y ago
    There is a Military Specification MIL-STD-1472H http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1400-1499/MIL-STD-1472H_57041/ http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1400-1499/MIL-STD-1472H...
jacobr1 6y ago
This is why the macbook touchbar is so awesome. I know it got a lot of hate when it first launched, but I use it all the time and have with all sorts of customizations.
- sundvor 6y ago
  I don't think people hate the touchbar per se, but the fact that they replaced a genuine row of keys to fit it in. If it had been in addition to a normal keyboard layout it would have been far, far better - in my opinion, speaking as a PC Streamdeck user.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was originally designed to live in the bottom bezel of the screen, but that got cut due to aesthetic concerns. Seems like a more natural functional fit.
- ak217 6y ago
  The touchbar doesn't have physical buttons. Physical buttons are critical. That's the key difference between an MFD and a touchscreen. The touchbar is a one-dimensional touchscreen, with most of its downsides. This isn't to say that displays on the buttons themselves are bad. But we pay way too little attention to the ergonomics of fine motor control and tactile/muscle memory. If you look at the article linked in this post, the key point being made is how hard it is to hunt for a featureless touchscreen button while your wrist is in the air being jostled around by turbulence. You don't have to be a pilot to appreciate interfaces that go easy on your fine motor skills though. Any action that requires extended use of fine motor skill (like holding your wrist in the air while hitting a tiny spot) will be at minimum tiring (both mentally and physically), and maybe impossible for children and the elderly. An MFD with a wrist rest, uneven button spacing/sizing/tactile patterns, rotary controls in the corners, and maybe button LEDs to color-code functions in addition to on-screen labels, would be superior to the touchbar. Actually, the numpad on "full-size" keyboards is tantalizingly close to that in some ways - it would be great if someone took a full-size keyboard and replaced the numpad with something that sort of looks like it but is functionally an MFD. By the way, all keyboards already have tactile pattern aids - the little bumps on the F and J keys that let your fingers quickly know if they're correctly positioned on the home row. Everyone knows that, but it's just a glimpse of what's possible if we invest more in tactile interfaces.
jmnicolas 6y ago
> I've always wanted to build a big rig of buttons to surround my pc monitor that I could program for various functions I do every day. I think it's called a keyboard ;)
rbanffy 6y ago
The HP-300 computer had buttons on the right side of the screen. http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=116 http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=116

dkersten 6y ago

I have a StreamDeck[1] that I use for various random things. There's an open source driver for it too that you can drive from Python[2], letting you run Python code when a button is pressed. You can do some cool stuff with it (eg I've used mine to make HTTP requests on button press) [1] https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck [2] https://github.com/abcminiuser/python-elgato-streamdeck https://github.com/abcminiuser/python-elgato-streamdeck

sundvor 6y ago
Ah, yes - writing our comments in parallel. :) The SD is great. Thanks for the link to Python code, I'll check it out.
- dkersten 6y ago
  Haha, yes, indeed! The python library is quite easy to use and lets you go beyond what the official application allows (plus, I use it on Linux). I actually looked at those XKeys ones first, but IIRC they were a little too expensive for what I wanted (yes, the StreamDeck isn't that cheap either, but its easier to use out of the box) StreamDeck is great for non-streaming tasks. I'm very happy with it.

sundvor 6y ago

XKeys looks nice! I've got a StreamDeck XL mounted under my monitor, in a button box; its capabilities as a macro machine are vastly underrated, although a few people are catching on that it's not just for live content creation. It's absolutely amazing when doing remote work to be able to fire up OBS Studio, the meeting join, microphone control etc in a single click - and I have that just on one page, along with other meeting controls such as camera scenes. Another for VS Studio, there's integration with that which is quite useful to send commands directly. I have all my most of ten work websites on buttons of their own. As mentioned, I also have button boxes however I'm still working out what the best way of sending commands would be; Joy2Key seem to mess up alt keys sometimes, making it sticky. When it worked it was nice, imagine adjusting text size just twisting a rotary for example.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

My company builds and works with industrial automation, custom CNC machines, and industrial robots. I've observed a shift from purely button-and-neon operated panels from early PLC or relay logic machines, to multifunction keys on the human-machine interface display (HMI) before touchscreens, to a fitful few years when people thought it was a good idea to build machines with VB6 and various serial to digital IO adapters, to purely touchscreen-driven machines with one legally-mandated physical emergency stop button (about when I arrived in the industry, the other machines were mostly historic beasts I've occasionally been charged with maintaining), and back towards multifunction keys. There are usually a few dedicated buttons and indicators for common operations (reset, cycle start, control power on, feed hold, feed rate override, etc), that still makes sense most of the time. I really think multifunction keys are the best of both worlds. As the author of this piece describes, the multifunction display with 20 keys around the outside (or, for CNCs, 10 keys across the bottom of the monitor and 10 off to the right, in a 1-4-4-1 spacing so you can feel exactly which button you're hovering over while you're staring unblinking at a cutter chewing through 5-figure assemblies) is a good compromise. It takes some serious concentrated planning to design a set of keys that are intuitive (top to scroll up, bottom to scroll down, one dedicated for enter, two for context-specific operations, etc), but it gives you the freedom to design relatively shallow but featureful menu systems that you can memorize and get tactile feedback to operate with confidence.

germinalphrase 6y ago
Can anyone recommend reading about UX design for these kinds of combined digital/physical interfaces.
- twiftly 6y ago
  There is a Military Specification MIL-STD-1472H http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1400-1499/MIL-STD-1472H_57041/ http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1400-1499/MIL-STD-1472H...

jacobr1 6y ago

This is why the macbook touchbar is so awesome. I know it got a lot of hate when it first launched, but I use it all the time and have with all sorts of customizations.

sundvor 6y ago
I don't think people hate the touchbar per se, but the fact that they replaced a genuine row of keys to fit it in. If it had been in addition to a normal keyboard layout it would have been far, far better - in my opinion, speaking as a PC Streamdeck user.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was originally designed to live in the bottom bezel of the screen, but that got cut due to aesthetic concerns. Seems like a more natural functional fit.
ak217 6y ago
The touchbar doesn't have physical buttons. Physical buttons are critical. That's the key difference between an MFD and a touchscreen. The touchbar is a one-dimensional touchscreen, with most of its downsides. This isn't to say that displays on the buttons themselves are bad. But we pay way too little attention to the ergonomics of fine motor control and tactile/muscle memory. If you look at the article linked in this post, the key point being made is how hard it is to hunt for a featureless touchscreen button while your wrist is in the air being jostled around by turbulence. You don't have to be a pilot to appreciate interfaces that go easy on your fine motor skills though. Any action that requires extended use of fine motor skill (like holding your wrist in the air while hitting a tiny spot) will be at minimum tiring (both mentally and physically), and maybe impossible for children and the elderly. An MFD with a wrist rest, uneven button spacing/sizing/tactile patterns, rotary controls in the corners, and maybe button LEDs to color-code functions in addition to on-screen labels, would be superior to the touchbar. Actually, the numpad on "full-size" keyboards is tantalizingly close to that in some ways - it would be great if someone took a full-size keyboard and replaced the numpad with something that sort of looks like it but is functionally an MFD. By the way, all keyboards already have tactile pattern aids - the little bumps on the F and J keys that let your fingers quickly know if they're correctly positioned on the home row. Everyone knows that, but it's just a glimpse of what's possible if we invest more in tactile interfaces.

jmnicolas 6y ago

> I've always wanted to build a big rig of buttons to surround my pc monitor that I could program for various functions I do every day. I think it's called a keyboard ;)

rbanffy 6y ago

The HP-300 computer had buttons on the right side of the screen. http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=116 http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=116