An Elgato Stream Deck but for general purposes https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-mk2 Basically imagine having 15 physical buttons to use with any kind of
actions, shortcuts,
macros etc. but you have a visual feedback too. It’s pretty great! I know there are alternatives like the Adafruit RP2040 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128 but the visual knobs make the Stream Deck
much better imo.
I have a small Stream Deck (6 buttons), and although I don't have a lot of inspiration, I found a few really useful use cases:
- global mute button (plugin Audio Mute). This is amazing and the most useful action I've setup.
- screenshot tool. I'm on a Mac and always forget the combination for opening the capture tool, so a physical button is nice to have
- iTerm button. It just opens a terminal, or make it appear if there's already one open.
- clock, because when using fullscreen mode, macOS doesn't show the clock
- weather, because it's cool
- specific to iTerm: a "split vertically" button, because after years of use, I can't remember how to split iTerm
- specific to Firefox: a macro to write this text "-method:OPTIONS domain:xxx.com" because I'm tired of typing it again and again in the network devtools filters
I bought one of these a couple of years ago with plans to use it for macros, shortcuts etc, but gave up using it because I found the system for writing your own plugins and generally configuring it was beyond awful, it felt like a designed-by-committee horror show. The complexity to just just set the button image and make it run a bash script when pressed was insane.
But I really wanted it to work, I can think of tons of useful buttons I want to have on my desk. Maybe I will give it another try. Can you tell me, have you got any tips, found any good third party tools for working with it? Maybe I just went down the wrong rabbit holes.
Are you using a mac? If so then the perfect combo is streamdeck + keyboard maestro. There are several great plugins for streamdeck that makes it easy to run keyboard maestro automations
Also honorable mention for the Mac, Hammerspoon. It has a native interface for Stream Deck and can do a considerable amount by itself for the price of a taskbar executable. My favorite is its ability to send keystrokes directly to specific apps. so I can have global a/v mute for Zoom.
I also use streamdeck-ui with linux, but it's fair to say that it's really basic. Nothing compared with the windows-app. And lately it has also some quirks, which made me basically abonden most usage of my streamdeck.
I was looking at getting one but couldn't stomach the price for an unknown benefit since I wasn't sure if I'd use it.
I ended up using Touch Portal[1] and put a phone on an old stand, and it pretty much does everything I want to do. Integrates with teams with mic on/off, hand raise, and reactions, and I created some nice graphs for cpu/gpu/disk load and a UTC clock for when I'm not in a meeting. Desktop app is free and phone app is like $13 or so. Works on Windows/MacOS and Linux support is apparently coming.
It's probably clunkier than a Stream Deck but it's a fraction of the price.
I use a Stream Deck daily to control AV production gear using BitFocus Companion (https://bitfocus.io/companion). I am constantly surprised at the range of supported equipment.
Complex operations that used to take three people can be done by a single person.
For a basic example:
Audio operator fades out background music and brings up video playback audio channels
Lighting operator puts lighting into video state
Video operator switches from holding slide input on screen to video playback input
Is now one button. Same equipment, same production value. One button. Boop. Go.
Admittedly it takes some additional configuration time, but for something like a roadshow where it is the same sequence of actions every day it ends up being a great time saver.
Stream Deck can indeed be nice, but it entirely depends on the environment on what you make of it. With windows the official software is very well-equipped with all kind of integrations and plugins, making good use of the abilities. Under linux, not so much, you are mostly on your own with quirky tools.
That said, if you can't make good use of the display anyway, then you can also just take a normal keyboard or numpad and remap the keys. There is some software around for this, or just write your own hacky script. Repurposing old hardware is such an overlooked solution.
I was thinking of doing something similar, but was never sure what to use that many keys for. Can you provide a photo or list a few examples of what you're doing with yours? Thanks!
I use the JIRA Plugin to have various open issues/tasks/bugs visible.
With API Plugins you can send requests, integrate Gitlab/Github.
Have a look at https://apps.elgato.com/plugins?categories=com.elgato.develo... for Developer Tools.
With the bunch of plugins from BarRaider you can control window layout etc.
I mapped all my IDE’s debug buttons to it, I could never go back. Debugging by hitting sequences of 3 button hotkeys isn’t fun and there’s no alternative without a collision.
It would be nice if it were that simple. You can just look at the default keymap and see there are tons of shortcuts that are not one button, and many are not even 2. Nor could they be, there are too many features. Step debugging alone uses like 10 features.
If you don't care about lcd icons (you can use self-printed ones anyway on transparent caps), there are loads of cheap programmable keypads on AliExpress, some with knobs, some with bluetooth, most with color lcd. The configuration software is not great, but in most cases you'll only have to suffer through that only once or twice. All for a very small fraction of ElGatos.
I used a Stream Deck XL for a long time, mostly as an app launcher, but the most useful feature was a "universal MUTE key". I used Keyboard Maestro to set up macros that would mute/unmute the microphone in any videoconferencing app, with the same physical key that also indicated the current status. This worked for Zoom, GoToMeeting and Google Meet.
I sold the Stream Deck XL for two reasons: I didn't need that many keys, and I found out that if you are to use a device like this at home and in the office, you really need two. The setup needs to be the same in all your work places, otherwise you won't bother learning to use the accessory.
As for some other less typical accessories: I use a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse and can't imagine doing any 3D CAD work without it.
Oh, also: for many years now all my monitors are on arms. The supplied stands are always too low, and arm mounting has the additional advantage of freeing up lots of space on the desk.
Does a 16-port USB-A hub count? (in addition to the CalDigit thunderbolt dock)
I upgraded from regular stream deck to the XL and haven't used a lot of the space yet. The folder actions really make it unnecessary for me - but I still love it
By far my most used actions for triggering Dell Display Manager to switch my monitor inputs. I don't have a full kvm set-up (separate keyboard, mouse but shared monitor) for my home desktop, work laptop.
I also have media control buttons to control music playing on my desktop throughout the day without having to toggle the monitor. A mute button to silence things for calls is also frequently used.
Finally, extra buttons to toggle some smart lights if I need to override some pre-programmed schedule.
I got Stream Deck mainly to control Teams on my work computer, which is Windows 10. Teams does not have global hotkey for mute and video toggle (or on/off) and that would be compatible with the status. (You can use Windows global mute and control video, but that status is not updated if you use Teams mute). The Teams video conference must be active for the mute button to work. The whole point of seperate keyboard is that I don't need to switch to the application. So I never got this to work well enough.
I got one to play the DJ air horn sound effect in meetings but between google hangouts, my m2 xlr device, and the stream deck something doesn’t work quite right.
