Jog Wheel Arrow Keys

The goal of this example is to demonstrate how to use the jog wheel on the X-keys Jog & Shuttle Pro to generate left and right keyboard arrow keys. This assumes that the reader is familiar with the basics of creating Building Blocks as demonstrated in the Detailed Tutorial.

The jog wheel on the X-keys Jog & Shuttle Pro is an auto-centering wheel that can be turned approximately 1/4 turn clockwise or counter-clockwise. It generates values in the range 1 — 7 when turned clockwise and -1 — -7 when turned counter-clockwise. Larger values are generated as the wheel is turned further.

The entire solution for this example is shown below. In brief, Rate building blocks are used to trigger Single Key building blocks and Multiplication building blocks are used to scale the value from the jog wheel. The result is that arrow keystrokes are generated faster as the jog wheel is turned farther.


In this example, the Multiplication building blocks are configured to multiply the value from the jog wheel by 4.0. This value can be increased or decreased to customize the speed at which arrow key presses are generated.

Since the Rate building blocks only respond to positive values, the Multiplication building block that is used to control the Left Arrow key presses is configured to multiply the jog wheel value by -4.0.