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Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

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Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#411

Post by haunter »

cal85 wrote: post #399
haunter wrote: post #378

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 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 ton…

tbh I didn’t have a problem with the official Windows app so I can’t say anything about that much

But under Linux I used this

https://timothycrosley.github.io/streamdeck-ui/

Works pretty well by my experience under Debian. There are some edge cases like Wayland (see the issues) though.

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#412

Post by fnomnom »

stn_za wrote: post #338
fallenhitokiri wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://prosettings.net/games/cs-go/ Logitech X Pro Superlight seems pretty popular and sadly doesn’t work via cable but only Logitechs lightning receiver. I’ve played with the Superlight for a year or so and and couldn’t notice the difference to the mouse is used before and am using now, both with a cable.

Ah, interesting. I haven't heard of these yet.

even with an older model like the g603 you cant tell the difference anymore

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#413

Post by IYasha »

oefnak wrote: post #351
causality0 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for their damnable placement of Fn where Ctrl should be.

You can change that in the bios.

Yeah, I did that. But I'm not sure now if that was that necessary - sometimes fingers slip to the nearby Ctrl key.

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#414

Post by dzhiurgis »

modeless wrote: post #384
dzhiurgis wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using laptop mic’s fixes bluetooth issue and massively improves audio quality

Yeah it's better than Bluetooth but a mic next to your mouth works far better than a mic in your laptop no matter how good it is.

You obviously never tried recent macbook...

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#415

Post by akvadrako »

hipplec wrote: post #75

I have a heating pad under my keyboard which keeps my hands warm in the winter. Was like $20 on amazon, and I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is, since I was really tired of always having a mug of hot water / tea / coffee to hold and didn't want to keep the heat on my house super high when I could just wear a sweatshirt and be fine except my fingers.

I use a tabletop infrared lamp for this.

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#417

Post by edanm »

pabloescobyte wrote: post #16

Lesser-known keyboards: I use a small 40% (45-key keyboard) or an ortholinear keyboard for my daily work. On both I have layers for a built-in Numpad, mouse keys (for controlling the mouse cursor without taking my hand off the keyboard), shortcuts for working with text (selecting an entire line, copying and pasting, etc) and various other finger- and wrist-saving shortcuts that help me ward off the likelihood of RSI.…

What keyboards are they?

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#418

Post by spoiler »

BunnyOSteele wrote: post #408
spoiler wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks! I didn't know there were already ready made integrations for dev tooling

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#419

Post by Eisenstein »

modeless wrote: post #237

Gaming wireless headphones, not for gaming but for videoconferencing. Bluetooth headphones are universally terrible for videoconferencing because the Bluetooth standard sucks and requires downgrading to telephone audio quality whenever the mic is enabled. Plus terrible latency. Gaming wireless headphones that come with their own dongle completely fix these issues and are perfect for videoconferencing. Someday the Blu…

Don't use magnetic USB adapters. They run a decent risk of frying your device. The USB-C spec was not designed to have the connection broken in that way. You will have no issues 99% of the time, but you will eventually have that time when your device gets fried. It takes a very precise design and a lot of clever engineering to have a high-current power connector with tiny pins be able to break without having the ground be the last connection to be broken.

It is also easy for the magnetic connector to short the power into a data line, and because it doesn't connect in the proper pin order and has no 'mid-plate' it has no mitigation against arcing. See this picture:

* https://imgur.com/a/bMvYtfy

Notice how some pins are longer than others? They are designed that way so that they connect first and disconnect last, so that ground is always established before and after other pins connect. This prevents connecting and disconnecting a cable from frying your electronics.

"The mid-plate shall be connected to the PCB ground with at least two grounding points. The mid-plate shall be designed such that plug pins A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, and B4, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9 do not short to ground during the connector mating process with an effective 6.2 mm receptacle shell implementation." [1]

[0] USB Type-C Spec R2.2 - October 2022, Figure 3-13, Page 65.

[1] USB Type-C Spec R2.2 - October 2022, Section 3.2.1 Interface Definition, Page 43.

* https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-type-cr-cable-and-c...

Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

#420

Post by prox »

lycopodiopsida wrote: post #394
enigma20 wrote: post #320

Portable screen. Didn't know that such exists, till about few weeks ago. Have a small apartment and sometimes have to work at the dining table. Using a big screen is not an option. Portable screen is light, size of the laptop and charges/sends data through one cable. Perfect!

Another possibility: if you own a mac, almost any ipad manufactured in last 6-7 years can act as an external screen.

There are apps like Duet and a number of others for Win use as well.
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