why on Earth would anyone want a second keyboard lonus asked me when I tried to
show him this project I've been working on for quite a while well let me tell
you it's not for everyone but if you are a productivity freak like me the concept
might really appeal to you basically this entire keyboard has been converted
into a set of 87 fully programmable
macro keys
Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream with their new core i76700 K and core i56600k
processors check out the link in the video description to learn more so to
give you some background on why I need a second keyboard I'm the video editor for
most of the videos that go up on this channel that's a lot of videos and the
more quickly and efficiently I can edit them the better now fast and efficient
video editing relies heavily upon keyboard shortcuts so much so that
inside Premiere I assigned functions to all the numbers letters and symbols all
the function keys the entire numpad and most of the reasonable combinations of
control shift and ALT that's a lot of shortcuts and yes I do use all of those
on a daily basis it's easy to remember single key shortcuts but the more keys
you need to press in a row the more difficult it is to not only remember the
key combination but also to physically press those keys that's what macro keys
are good for if you don't know a macro key will basically launch a
pre-programmed series of keystrokes and or Mouse clicks which you would
otherwise have to press manually every time for example let's say I'm editing a
video in Premiere and I want to reverse a clip on the timeline to do this I
could click on the clip Mouse over to the clip menu select speed duration
Mouse over to the panel that appears click reverse and then Mouse over to
enter and click on that this takes a few
seconds to do alternatively I could just press one single macro button which
automatically executes the keystrokes controlr tab tab space enter which
accomplishes exactly the same thing but in a fraction of a second that's the
power and usefulness of a keyboard macro
Gamers will use macros in Games like World of Warcraft DOTA Starcraft League
of Legends and so on but pretty much any game can be made easier with macros and
keyboard macros are also really useful for certain jobs like video editing
animation graphic design programming Music Creation and I don't know
accounting maybe I don't really know what accountants do all day but pretty
much anything that involves heavy computer use and repetitive tasks
usually macros are just a series of blind keystrokes and mouse clicks but
you can make even more powerful macros
using Auto hotkey auto hotkey is a free
brilliant little program that you can use to completely automate repetitive
tasks remap Keys intelligently simulate
clicks and keystrokes and do a lot more stuff that I don't even understand I've
used auto hotkey to program a ton of useful features for Premiere Pro that
don't even exist in the application itself like recalling saved Transitions
and applying effects directly onto selected Clips but my problem now is
that I use so many macros and so so many keyboard shortcuts that I have now
physically run out of keys on the keyboard and what can you do then well
we have a few of these cool little Tech Keys keyboards lying around the office
so I experimented with those we also have a razor orb weaver which is
actually pretty awesome and it's been designed for this exact purpose all of
its keys can be remapped to any key or key combination you desire now since
you're still restricted to standard keyboard Keys what I like to do is
program the keys on these extra keyboards to execute very obscure key
combinations like Control Alt F1 and
then I program Auto hotkey to listen for these key combinations and then execute
whatever function I desire the trouble is if you do too much of this it's tough
to remember what combinations you've already used and what combinations all
your various different applications might already be using but you know what
the tech keys keyboards and the orb weaver still don't have enough keys for
all the extra functions that I want and
these keyboards are surprisingly expensive and that's when it hit me why
can't I just hook up a second keyboard to my computer well it turns out that
Windows will treat every keyboard that you plug in as one keyboard you can plug
in all the keyboards you like but your computer cannot tell the difference
between them bummer fortun Ely one of my
Twitter followers linked me to this video by Tom Scott who successfully got
14 keyboards to work as their own separate inputs he used a program called
Lua macros which was actually developed for flight simulator enthusiasts who
want to have a lot of switches and buttons for their virtual cockpits great
so it is possible now all I needed to do
was figure out how to code in Lua and
find a way to get Lua Ma R to communicate with auto hotkey which is
where all of my functions already are Tom Scott had done this but he didn't
provide any of the necessary details like you know sample code then it
presses the f24 key that's after quite a
bit of frustration I finally figured out how to do it my second keyboard now
works as its own unique input and every
single one of these Keys acts as a macro button which will launch its own Unique
Auto hotkey script so here's how you do it first download Lua macros and auto
hotkey plug in both of the keyboards you want to use run Lua macros and open up
quick start. Lua then click on the play
button you'll get a prompt asking you to identify device macros which will become
the name of your second keyboard all you need to do is press any key on that
second keyboard luam macros will now recognize it as such and those key book
will now be intercepted by Lu macros and therefore blocked from normal typing
once you get that working you can write your own code or download and use my Lua
code which basically just writes a small string to a file on disk and then
presses the f24 key download my auto hotkey script or write your own and
double click on it to get it running an icon for that script will now appear on
the taskbar now anytime the f24 key is
virtually pressed by luam macros this Auto hotkey script will read the
string in that file and execute the correct Associated function Tada I knew
it would be difficult to remember which key did what so I created a bunch of
keycap images in Photoshop printed them cut them out and taped them onto the
existing keys if you do this keep in mind that your key caps will not
necessarily be compatible with every slot on the keyboard so you may have to
be careful to maintain the underlying quty layout although for me I think it
was just the F and J Keys the keyboard that I used for this project was the
Logitech k120 and it's nothing special
at all any cheap or old keyboard will work perfectly when using the second
keyboard it does take about 2 seconds to look down find the key you want move
your hand over to that key press it and then move your hand back to the primary
keyboard so it's best to use the secondary keyboard for secondary
functions that you don't need all that often if you want to try building and
programming a second keyboard I will be providing all the necessary code in the
video description you're welcome and before you say it I know that my code is
sloppy and suboptimal I know but guess
what it still works so if any of you
real programmers out there want to complain about my messy code I sure
would appreciate it if you could provide a functional sample of some code that
will work even better a great place to do this will be in the Linus Tech tips
discussion thread that is associated with this video also linked below
there's still a lot to figure out like using modifier keys and double tapping
to launch a different function in fact Lua macros itself is just a side project
of a single man with very little free time it's not even out of beta and it's
still got a lot of bugs the good news is the software is open source so if you
can help to make Lu macros better I really suggest suggest that you do I
think it would be great if we could use the power of our community to improve
useful Niche software like luam macros
personally I'm very satisfied with my secondary keyboard and I'm really
looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with tunnel bear is the easyto
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LT thanks for watching guys give the video a like or a dislike get subscribed
join the Forum and talk about Lua macros
or whatever uh you can support us by changing your Amazon bookmarks to one
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something and you should check out another one of my videos up here or
wherever where I talk about the fly clly and how incredibly disappointing it was
no the smart pet I I keep forgetting what it was called it's terrible though