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x-keys foot pedal + modifier keys
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x-keys foot pedal + modifier keys Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:48 pm  •   #3160
jbellis



Joined: 04 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
i have an x-keys foot pedal to which ii am trying to map cmd/ctrl/opt keys



when i push the buttons the lights go green, but when i quit, they do nothing in terminal

verified that CMHelper is running, no clue how to further troubleshoot
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Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:42 pm  •   #3161
alkalifly



Joined: 08 May 2008
Posts: 26
Select one of the keypress building blocks so that the Inspector window shows the properties for that block.

What does it say for Behavior? If it says "One-shot" then change that to "Press and Hold"
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Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:10 pm  •   #3162
jbellis



Joined: 04 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
they are all set to press-and-hold
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Thu Jun 05, 2008 9:27 am  •   #3165
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
The Single Key building blocks control ControllerMate's virtual keyboard. So, when the pedal is pushed, the modifier keys on the virtual keyboard turns on. Unfortunately, modifiers on one keyboard won't combine with keys on a different keyboard. So if you push the pedal for the Command key, and then press the Q key, you won't see a Command-Q -- just a plain Q. You would see the same behavior if you had two USB keyboards and pushed Command on one and Q on the other.

Whether or not there is a workaround for this limitation depends on the physical keyboard that you are using. Are you using a USB/Bluetooth keyboard, or is it the built-in keyboard of a laptop?
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Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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Thu Jun 05, 2008 9:10 pm  •   #3172
jbellis



Joined: 04 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
Ken wrote:

Whether or not there is a workaround for this limitation depends on the physical keyboard that you are using. Are you using a USB/Bluetooth keyboard, or is it the built-in keyboard of a laptop?


that makes sense... I primarily care about getting it to work w/ an external usb keyboard.
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Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:32 am  •   #3174
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
With an external USB keyboard, what you effectively need to do is temporarily disable the native behavior of the keyboard keys, then use the building blocks to generate the function that you want.

To disable the native behavior of the keys, you'll need a controller configuration for the keyboard that redefines the behavior of the buttons to "None". Disable the controller configuration itself so that it doesn't affect the keyboard until you need it.

Then, you can use building blocks that represent the pedals to activate modifiers and activate the controller configuration (disabling the keyboard keys). These blocks will look something like...


The Properties building block is configured such that when its input turns ON, it turns ON the controller configuration. And when its input turns OFF, the configuration is turned OFF.

The last part is a bit annoying ... linking up the buttons on the physical keyboard to the virtual keyboard. This would be done with a series of building blocks such as...

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Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:31 am  •   #3197
jbellis



Joined: 04 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
this mostly works, but for some reason "cmd" is generating "opt" instead.
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Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:25 pm  •   #3201
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
jbellis wrote:
this mostly works, but for some reason "cmd" is generating "opt" instead.

That sounds odd. Is this a Windows USB keyboard that has the modifier keys rearranged?
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Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:49 pm  •   #3212
jbellis



Joined: 04 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
it's the contollermate virtual keyboard that is not generating cmd [from the xkeys button]
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Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:47 pm  •   #3214
alkalifly



Joined: 08 May 2008
Posts: 26
That is strange. I have no problem generating command modifier keypresses for X11 using ControllerMate.

Is the xkeys button definitely triggering? Try hooking up the same xskeys button to a key that would produce some output (any old letter or number) and see whether you can get that number to 'type' by pressing the key.

Also, check your X11 preferences, and see whether the option to 'emulate a three button mouse' is checked. If it is, it may be that the command key is being intercepted by X11.app as a mouse button modifier (emulating a right-click with command+left-click), and not being passed on to the program as a command key.
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Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:45 am  •   #3215
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
You can also get an unbiased view of what keys are being pressed by using the Apple keyboard viewer. This will tell you exactly what keys are being held down by either a physical keyboard or ControllerMate's virtual keyboard. The only limitation is that it will only show the state of one keyboard at a time.
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Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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Would you share your controller setup? Mon May 24, 2010 7:00 am  •   #5296
TimL



Joined: 23 May 2010
Posts: 3
I, too, have an Xkeys foot pedal that I want to control the Command, Control, and Option keys on a MacBook. If you've got your setup working, can you share it so I (and perhaps others) can use it?
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Sat May 29, 2010 4:01 am  •   #5343
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
TimL wrote:
I, too, have an Xkeys foot pedal that I want to control the Command, Control, and Option keys on a MacBook. If you've got your setup working, can you share it so I (and perhaps others) can use it?


The pedals can be setup to generate the Command, Control and Option keys ... but they may not work in the way you intend.

Modifiers that are generated on ControllerMate's virtual keyboard cannot be combined with keypresses on a physical keyboard. The behavior would be the same as if two USB keyboards were used. For example, if Shift is pressed on one USB keyboard and A on another: "a" would be generated instead of "A".

If you want to combine the Command, Control and Option keys with mouse clicks, that should work as expected.
_________________
Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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Any hope for it in the future? Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:53 am  •   #5350
TimL



Joined: 23 May 2010
Posts: 3
That's too bad. Is there any hope of extending ControllerMate so that it could route device events to something other than the virtual keyboard? (That's just one way the desired affect might be achieved. If another way would be easier, I'd have no objection; I just want to be able to use a foot pedal to control modifier keys that I can't easily manipulate with my fingers.)
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Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:51 pm  •   #5355
Ken
Developer


Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 2094
That's actually a bit of a tall order. In order to make events appear as though they come from a device, they need to be produced by that device's driver. That requires writing a custom driver for the device to allow events to be generated by software in addition to the hardware. For keyboards that use a device-specific driver (such as those built into laptops), a custom device-specific driver needs to be written for each supported keyboard. Custom services provided by the original drivers would need to be reverse-engineered and replicated in the new custom drivers. So, for anything other than trivial features, it can get to be a large task.
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Ken
www.orderedbytes.com - www.controllermate.com
ControllerMate -- Programming controllers for Mac OS X since ... well ... recently.
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