300 Key Button Pad!

Here's the windup.

I love playing Halo PC and I LOVE being able to make comments while I'm playing but it's very difficult to take a break in the game to type out my battle cry (LEEeeeRROOOOOoooooYYYY NeiJEEEEeeeNNNNnnnnKIIINNNNnnnnssss) and not unlike the real Leroy Jenkins, that is something I say right before I get the ol' "Own-dizzle" from some pistol wielding noob in like 4 shots, but I still like the game even if the body count is mostly mine. Now, at work I have a wonderful piece of equipment called X-Key Pro key pad which is a really nice 58 key button pad with two layers (total of 115 buttons because you have to have at least one of them to switch to the next layer). The one button works as kind of a "shift" key. I use this in conjunction with a program called Quick Macros (extremely versatile and insanely cheap for what you get $30) to fire off all kinds of macros like: project timers; window transparency; launch databases; and skip ahead 30 seconds or 3 minutes in an mp3 I'm playing in WinAmp (I don't know what WinAmp has against lamas). It's really nice and worth $150 but only if you've got the $150.

And here's the pitch

So, I got in touch with a wizard I know in Lithuania name Gintaras who wrote the program Quick Macros. I said there has to be a way of capturing a keyboard strike and firing off a macro instead. Well, he did it in about 10 hours!! That freakin' guy has made a function to get the keyboard id from a kb and then you can set the filter in the QM macro to only "see" that keyboard; when that keyboard fires off a keystroke QM intercepts it and if there is a macro assigned to it fires off the macro and "throws away" the keystroke. So, in my testing this morning, when I hit "a" on the 2nd keyboard one particular sound one goes off; when I hit "h" on the 3rd keyboard on my system a different sound goes off; and when I hit "scroll lock" button on the 4th keyboard a 3rd sound goes off!!!! Now the sounds only showed me that the different macros were being addressed properly so you could have anything coded into them. Oh, and btw, none of those letters are typed!

One really neat thing that comes with this. Let's say that I have 2 extra keyboards. I can get the id of both of those keyboards code all of my macros on each of them unplug them and set them aside and then plug them back in and QM will recognize them and I'm up and running with all my macros for that specific keyboard!!! So, now I have a macro-keyboard that I want to use for all of my jibes in Halo like " 'Least I have chicken!" right after that noob schooled me with pistol and one for the everyday things with QM (ie login to programs/web sites; backing up files; auto-respond to emails etc.).

Oh, and the $150 I saved? Well, I already blew that on Diet Coke, so no new gadget for me.....8o(

And here's the swing...

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With 3 keyboards (usb) at $3.81 and QM at $30 (that's $41.43 total plus shipping and handling), you have a the button pad capacity of

• 294 single stroke hotkeys
• and over 3000 possible hotkeys with all the ctl-alt-shft-win combinations!!!

THAT MY FRIENDS IS A GRAND SLAM!!!

My spleen is still quivering!!!!

If you have questions about this you can contact me at quickmacros at gmail dot com