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A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

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111–118 of 118 posts

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#111

My experience with Stream Deck has not been so smooth, but it is more due to Windows as an OS on corporate environment rather than the hardware. I got Stream Deck primarily to show status and control Teams online meetings on Windows. Unfortunately, on Windows, Teams does not have global hotkeys for mute/unmute mic, audio on/off, video on/off etc. The keys are local to the online meeting window only. It also does not…

> Unfortunately, on Windows, Teams does not have global hotkeys for mute/unmute mic, audio on/off, video on/off etc If I'm understanding your need correctly, you can do this with Microsoft Powertoys: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/video-con...

Thanks, I was not aware of this.

It appears to use the Windows global mic control API, which is pretty straight-forward to even implement by yourself programmatically.

Unfortunately, as Teams does some magic with the mute, if you have an external program, but still use Teams app to mute your conference call after call has already started, the state will not propagate to the external program, i.e. you cannot reliably show on the button whether the mic is muted or not.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#112

My favorite use of Stream Deck (XL) is hooking it up to a small, custom API to quickly change my Slack status at work. It’s so nice to smash a single button and walk away to lunch or walk my dog. I also have the top row filled with world clocks.

You wouldn’t have open sourced this process, by any chance?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#113
post #46
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…

Not all apps have in-app volume. In which case you have Hardware volume x Windows master volume x Windows app volume -- and which should be removed? No hardware volume? Everything controlled by software? Sounds horrible. No Windows master volume? What if you want everything quieter, turn it all down one-by-one? No Windows volume mixer? I explained why that's an issue in my previous comment.

Your example of a good implementation is iOS which is hard to compare to because mobile OSes are generally single-task focused. But I certainly wouldn't want an iOS-style volume control on my PC.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#114
post #5

I want a larger version for use as a game controller.

Elgato Stream Deck XL comes with 32 buttons. Are you saying you want even more than that?

That's more like it! Three or more 3x4 hotbars isn't uncommon in an MMO.

Though I'd like a full ~100 key keyboard also. ;-)

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#115
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…

> 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.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#116

My favorite use of Stream Deck (XL) is hooking it up to a small, custom API to quickly change my Slack status at work. It’s so nice to smash a single button and walk away to lunch or walk my dog. I also have the top row filled with world clocks.

You wouldn’t have open sourced this process, by any chance?

Stream Deck lets you run a GET request from the default button set. The code part is pretty uninteresting, really: express handler wrapped around the Slack Web API. Throw in some query vars so I can set the emoji, text, and set the minutes after which it will clear (or 0 for never clear).

https://gist.github.com/codyogden/a8d4d024cdd403e56e2c84335a...

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elgato Stream Deck XL comes with 32 buttons. Are you saying you want even more than that?

That's more like it! Three or more 3x4 hotbars isn't uncommon in an MMO. Though I'd like a full ~100 key keyboard also. ;-)

There was a full 100 key keyboard with LCD keys made in 2007. It they were still available I would buy one myself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#118
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 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.
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