Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

sixcolors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 118 posts

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#61

Post by Twirrim »

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 meeting or webinar I was in, and bring that up. Then a second script to do the same but also unmute. That has become so insanely useful I'm really kicking myself about not having used those buttons before.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#62

Post by bozhark »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #47
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 love this, thank you for sharing. Also, I'm curious... what does the "Great Wolf Lodge" button do?

Must be for the water works

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#63

Post by memoriasit »

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?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#64

Post by flexd »

hbn wrote: post #41
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…

> 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…

I use Voicemeeter Banana to control audio on Windows. Works great for exactly that scenario, where I want my voice comms to have a higher volume than games, and also nice when I have multiple inputs (microphones) and outputs

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#65

Post by masklinn »

hbn wrote: post #41
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…

> 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…

> I can't do it because there's no volume mixer.

Have you tried Rogue Amoeba’s Loopback?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#66

Post by jwr »

I've been using a Stream Deck XL for the last couple of years (with a Mac) and I'm very happy with it.

I use it mostly as an app switcher (button press brings up an app, another press hides it if it's in the foreground), with additional buttons for volume control and speaker mute. It's incredibly powerful with Keyboard Maestro. An example of a really useful automation I have: a "mute microphone" button that does the right thing in Google Meet, Zoom and GoToMeeting. No need to remember the fancy shortcut that each app invented, no need to hunt for the button with the mouse, no more hitting the "Leave" button instead of muting/unmuting. A single hardware button that toggles the microphone state in any conferencing app that is in the foreground. That alone was worth the price of the StreamDeck.

What I found though is that the XL is too large: I don't use that many buttons and I can't be bothered to tinker with the configuration endlessly to make use of them. I think I will replace it with the standard-sized StreamDeck (15 buttons).

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#67

Post by tauntz »

I have a good old Ableton Launchpad mk1 (These go apparently for as low as $25 on ebay/Reverb).

This gives me 8x8 + 16 buttons that I monitor via a Java app that I wrote. It works but I'd love to have a UI app for controlling it and assigning actions, similar to https://www.midi-mixer.com but for macOS - I'm too lazy to write a UI on top of my Java hack. Any recommendations for something that can consume generic MIDI events and map them to.. stuff?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#68

Post by noyesno »

password4321 wrote: post #57

It sounds like their software is very polished. Also, it might be possible to emulate the device on an old phone. I bought an all-in-one PC with a touchscreen in part to experiment with using it in a similar fashion, but haven't made much progress yet.

Elgato offers a mobile solution, too:

    - https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-mobile
There are also a number of free alternatives:

    - https://macrodeck.org/
    - https://ecrax.github.io/streamdeck/
    - https://deckboard.app/
    - https://lioranboard.ca/
    - https://matricapp.com/

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#69

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

hbn wrote: post #41
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…

> 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…

The media keys are atrociously implemented on macOS - I don't know how they've managed it so badly, for so long, without a fix. Listening to Spotify and pressing play/pause, you'd expect the music to pause, not to suddenly be listening to additional sound, often from a video in a browser tab you last played a month ago.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#70

Post by helloguillecl »

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 character or emoji. The problem with the Touch Bar was mostly: 1) no physical feedback 2) misplacing the Esc key.

Post reply on HN