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A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

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Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#91

Post by sokoloff »

cletus wrote: post #32

As an alternative to a stream deck, I started using a MIDI board last year. I tried a copule and settled on the Behringer X-Touch Mini [1]. It's less than $100. What I primarily use it for is volume control (including muting). Like I have a particular knobs for Chrome, Master Volume and games. This is all pretty easy to set up with something like MIDI Mixer [2]. There are Youtube videos on it. I also use the media co…

One of things that drives me crazy about iOS volume control is trying to adjust the volume of navigation while driving.

Navigation system pipes up; that’s a little more quiet than I’d like; by the time I can adjust it safely, it’s only time to adjust the ringer; repeat.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#93

Post by sylvinus »

adanto6840 wrote: post #17

Shameless self-promotion, but I used a Stream Deck to make "Princess Buttons" for my kids: https://dantonio.info/projects/the-buttons/ Allows me to not be the DJ/arbiter of music for my toddlers, yet still provides them with control over the music (Sonos) and helps them learn to negotiate & take turns between themselves. The Stream Deck has, thus far, held up to quite a lot of abuse. I've added some lighting control…

I built something somewhat similar, to link YouTube videos to steam deck buttons so my 2yo kid could listen to his songs :) It runs everywhere Python is available, including raspberry pis ;) Code is here: https://github.com/sylvinus/raspberrydeck

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#94

Post by reificator »

cletus wrote: post #46
hbn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an aside, volume on Windows is a horrible mess. You can have an external speaker volume, a system Master volume, an app-specific volume (the last 2 through the Windows Volume Mixer) and then volume settings inside a game. You never have 2 applications outputting audio and you want to balance them? Sometimes I'll be playing a game and listening to a podcast at the same time, and I want the podcast to have the lou…

You misunderstand my complaint. Windows already does this. There's a volume mixer where each app has its own volume. That's still the case AND the game/app has a separate volume. So the actual volume playing is effectively: Hardware volume x Windows master volume x Windows app volume x In-app volume No one wants or needs that level of control. You end up adjusting these separately as you need until you find out one d…

> So the actual volume playing is effectively:

> Hardware volume x Windows master volume x Windows app volume x In-app volume

> No one wants or needs that level of control.

I don't have a separate hardware volume relative to the Windows master volume, but otherwise I want and need that level of control.

- Windows Master Volume: I turn the knob on my headset or keyboard and things get quieter or louder. This is the thing I adjust most frequently.

- Windows App Volume: I turn games down, usually to 10-20% or so. Then I turn everything but comms (discord, zoom, etc) down to 80%. This ensures that I hear live communication over all else, and that my games aren't drowning out whatever I'm watching in the background.

- In-App Volume: Here I adjust balance in games. Music unfortunately gets set to 0 because I'm rarely just playing a game these days. Voice lines get set higher than sound effects until I'm sure I can distinguish them clearly.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#95

Post by helloguillecl »

juliendorra wrote: post #89
helloguillecl wrote: post #70

I wonder if the Touch Bar was actually a poorly executed good idea. I've always used a full external keyboard (with numeric pad) but I'd love to have the F16-F19" keys graphically mapping to something depending on the context. For example, in VS code, I currently have F13 for start debugging and resume. F14 for stepping over, and F15 for stepping into. I would wish to have a physical F key with a configurable charact…

The Touch Bar can be what the Stream Deck is, a small keyboard of live macro keys, if you customize it using Better Touch Tool. I did that and now have useful contextual custom keys and shortcuts. I know I will miss it a lot when (it seems inevitable now) I have to change for a non-touch bar MacBook Pro . I would not miss the standard Touch Bar

Yes, but no physical feedback on pressing means you can't relax after pressing the key.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#96

Post by philderbeast »

adanto6840 wrote: post #17

Shameless self-promotion, but I used a Stream Deck to make "Princess Buttons" for my kids: https://dantonio.info/projects/the-buttons/ Allows me to not be the DJ/arbiter of music for my toddlers, yet still provides them with control over the music (Sonos) and helps them learn to negotiate & take turns between themselves. The Stream Deck has, thus far, held up to quite a lot of abuse. I've added some lighting control…

that poor stream deck looks well loved, hopefully it doesn't die on you from getting dirt/water/god knows what else on it in the hands of children :)

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#97

Post by hammock »

memoriasit wrote: post #63
Twirrim wrote: post #61

I never thought I'd have a use for extra buttons all that much. There's always keyboard combinations to spare. Yet about 18 months ago, I remembered I'd got these 5 custom buttons on my keyboard that in something like a decade and a half of using this keyboard model, I'd never once used. A little bit of searching later, I figured out how to write a bash script that would (for Linux) find the zoom window for whatever…

Could you share that script?

Would it work for Mac?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#98

Post by djaychela »

rtpg wrote: post #34

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 fo…

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.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#99

Post by danadannecy »

nickjj wrote: post #88
tomstuart wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One advantage is that you can map a button to a folder, allowing you to drill down into a whole different set of items. This isn’t functionally different from what you can achieve with a numpad + modifiers, or even just a regular keyboard, but it’s clearly nicer and requires less memorisation. It’s also not just “custom icons”, it’s a live display — e.g. in the top image of the linked post, you can see a display on o…

> One advantage is that you can map a button to a folder, allowing you to drill down into a whole different set of items. You can do this with custom key mappings on all major operating systems. Basically you can open a program, open a folder, run a script or do anything you can run from the command line (including running multi-step operations). On Windows there's AutoHotkey. It sounds like it might be complicated b…

I think you may have misunderstood, by open a folder, they meant open a folder of buttons on the stream deck, allowing you to press a button to completely change which buttons are displayed on the screen.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#100

Post by adanto6840 »

abrugsch wrote: post #77
adanto6840 wrote: post #17

Shameless self-promotion, but I used a Stream Deck to make "Princess Buttons" for my kids: https://dantonio.info/projects/the-buttons/ Allows me to not be the DJ/arbiter of music for my toddlers, yet still provides them with control over the music (Sonos) and helps them learn to negotiate & take turns between themselves. The Stream Deck has, thus far, held up to quite a lot of abuse. I've added some lighting control…

Also thanks for sharing, however your second picture in the header screams to me that Streamdeck + sand doesn't go well together and looks like a common combination when kids plus outside play settings are combined. You mention a waterproof enclosure but I doubt the streamdeck itself is IP rated. I suspect a thin transparent sheet over the top would fix that though, or do you just replace the streamdeck every so ofte…

It's been out there for a year and is still working well, though is indeed dirty (I wipe it down occasionally). There's a bit of overhead protection from the elements and we discourage sand/dirt being applied to the buttons, though I did consider a silicon "liner" at some point. The Stream Deck itself seems to be more rugged than I expected, though! :)
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