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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?

#551

Post by linsomniac »

romanhn wrote: post #38

After working for almost 3 years with a barebones work-from-home setup (standup desk + laptop), I finally invested recently in some equipment to improve upon my crappy laptop camera and a room with little natural light. The difference in my video call quality is night and day. This is what I got: - A key light (Godox ES45) to throw a bunch of bright, natural white light at my face. Attached to the desk and positioned…

I got a Seeed ReSpeaker mic array and have been really happy with it. At first it wasn't working at all, but then I did a firmware update on it and it's been great since. It's a 4 mic array with speaker output, and it does some fancy processing to remove the output played from the speakers and uses the 4 mics to detect voice location and "zoom in" on it.

I went from terrible echoy voice to rock solid.

Then I got a 16" MBP, which is what I mostly use now for video conferences because I upgraded my Linux work laptop and switched to Wayland and can no longer do screen sharing.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker-USB-Mic-Array-p-4247.h...

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

#552

Post by mnw21cam »

noodlesUK wrote: post #526
mnw21cam wrote: post #524

I have a 10-input analogue-to-digital converter plugged into one USB port, which allows me to log environmental things like current outside light levels, and a one-wire adaptor plugged into another, which lets me have a string of thermometers on a long cheap cable. I currently log temperature outside in the shade, in my "root cellar", in the greenhouse, 10cm under the soil, and the central heating radiator pipe insid…

This is really interesting. What software do you use on your computer to interface with the ADC and 1 wire adapter? Is it something industrial like LabView or is it custom code written against whatever driver there is for the peripherals?

The ADC just pretends to be a serial port, so I just (sleep 3570 ; echo "~.") | cu -l /dev/ttyUSB0 --speed 115200 to get an hour's worth of telemetry and pipe that into very simple analysis software I wrote.

The one-wire port exposes itself as lots of files in /sys/devices/w1_bus_master1/ that you can read that contain the temperature measurements.

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

#553

Post by KaiserPro »

tulsidas wrote: post #493
adrian_b wrote: post #451

After experimenting for many years with many kinds of mice, trackballs, touchpads, trackpoints etc. in the search for the most comfortable graphic pointing device, I have settled to use, instead of a mouse, a small Wacom Intuos graphic tablet (usually with Linux), configured in its "mouse" mode, i.e. with relative coordinates, not with its default absolute coordinates. At least for me, using a stylus has proven to be…

I was thinking about something like this for some time as well... care to elaborate? do you pick up the pen every time you switch from keyboard to "mouse" or do you have some type of ring holder?

I just dump my pen in the gap between the function keys and number keys.

I still have a mouse, so for quick stuff I tend to use that. but when I want to give my right hand a rest, or if I am doing precision stuff (ie copy pasting with small fonts, or drawing/CAD) then I use the table in absolute mode( that is the top right of the tablet is always top right of the screen)

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

#554

Post by benhurmarcel »

randallsquared wrote: post #503
rektide wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireless headphones. Because sometimes I really have to go and it's literally no problem to walk to the bathroom. Or to go make tea. Or to do whatever. Freedom to not be chained up is amazing. Try it. I too don't feel like I've had to mess with audio settings. I have some SteelSeries Actis Pro's I bought a long time ago. They have bluetooth, but there's also a nice usb-based head-unit I use with higher quality, lower…

I use wireless headphones because cords get in my way, but the “step away to make tea” seems like an unlikely use case to me. It isn’t as if you don’t have to see the screen anyway… more than half the time someone is sharing a window and saying things like, “what do we do about THIS?” while waving their pointer over something.

You underestimate how much time is commonly spent in meetings literally waiting for a moment you are interested in.

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

#555

Post by hn92726819 »

thiht wrote: post #481
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 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…

> global mute button

Is this different than the system mute button next to volume up and down?

> iTerm: a "split vertically" button

FYI: you can customize your own shortcuts. I use i3 on linux, so I bound my split and movement keys in iterm to be the same as my Linux ones

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

#556

Post by joncrocks »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #98
riceart wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s essentially no lag in a dedicated wireless receiver mouse - the additional latency is dwarfed by the baseline latency of the hardware and software. https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency Yes connectivity issues can be a problem in certain environments but luckily this has usually not been a problem with receivers not in close proximity to interference, including USB3. Battery wise I have had cheap…

The problem I have with wireless mice is they always die when I'm in the middle of something important or an fps game. Switched back to wired because of that.

You can get some now that have wireless charging (with a compatible mousemat).

e.g. Logitech PowerPlay

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

#557

Post by user3939382 »

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 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.

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

#558

Post by rgoulter »

shortrounddev wrote: post #537
rgoulter wrote: post #94

I think the most significant keyboard feature is "small spacebar". Most keyboards have a spacebar which is the size of 5 or more keys. It's more convenient if this very wide key gets replaced with Esc, Tab, Space, Backspace, Enter. (Which saves the pinky from having to reach for those keys). For better or worse, keyboards which do follow this "no large spacebar" approach then tend to have other design improvements: e…

I just checked on my own hand; I think I only use my pinky to hit Enter. Other keys: Esc - Left Middle Finger Tab - Left Ring Finger Space - Either thumb, but usually right thumb Backspace - Right ring finger Enter - Right Pinky I do use my left pinky for shift and caps lock though

Sure, but it's quite a reach to hit Esc where it is. You either need to move your hand, or to really stretch the fingers.

With more thumb keys, it's much easier to have access to these keys with hands rested on home row.

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

#559

Post by jrootabega »

What do you mean by ring? Because at home in the late 1990's, I remember we had some kind of 3d ring mouse that worked with ultrasonic motion trackers clamped to the monitor. It was either this (the Kantek Spectrum Ring Mouse) or something almost identical:

https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=19

From what I remember, it didn't work too well. Or it wasn't worth the gorilla arm. I was only using it for clerical work and maybe some gaming.

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

#560

Post by ainiriand »

user3939382 wrote: post #557
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 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.

You mean like F7, F8, and F9 in IntelliJ?
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