A keyboard and Mouse work fine–great even–for most input tasks. At the end of the day, however, standard equipment is meant to work for a wide range of people doing a wide range of tasks, not to fit your particular body or work style. Perhaps you have a favorite hard-to-reach shortcut or two, or want to repeat a sequence of keys at a single touch of a button. Or maybe you even like the feel of an actual knob for modifying the system volume. When a standard keyboard/mouse just isn’t cutting it anymore, it may be time to look into a macro pad, or perhaps even create your own.
In my case, I designed the “JC Pro Macro” auxiluary input. It features a rotary encoder that takes care of volume control by default, as well as 5 separate keys that can be programmed to execute a variety of tasks. The encoder button switches between input modes, the second of which moves the mouse around at random to makes it look like someone is there, if not being particularly useful.
Other features include space for four WS2812B LEDs, along with broken out SDA, SCL, GND, +5V, and two other GPIO pins. Pins are arranged in such a way as to easily mount a .96″ OLED display, and you could use them to expand the device in any number of ways.
The device is available as just the board, or with a variety of assembly kit options, and code is available on GitHub. Of course, this isn’t the only keyboard option available on Tindie. I was inspired, in part, to design this after seeing the Hub16 input device and USB hub, as well as this custom keyboard kit.
