PART 5
Extra KeysSorry about all of the pictures, but to understand your options, you need to see your options.When I started about a year and a half ago I thought that it was insane that I had to memorize so many keyboard commands. The Joystick I had was fairly programmable. Using one joystick key as a SHIFT key let me program it with about 21 - 24 commands. But there was a whole lot more that were needed for most of what I flew.
Another problem was that my desktop space is limited. I didn’t want to have to reach over the yoke to slide the keyboard out from under the panels so I could hit a key every now and again. It really does spoil the elusion that you’re using aircraft buttons and switches to fly.
Keyboards are VERY cheap, so I looked into creating one like
Roger Dodger likes to promote.
But more often than not people get something like this:
. Done CAREFULLY I'm sure that it can look very good. And because you can get keyboards so cheaply, you can have different keyboards for different types of aircraft. I've even seen old keyboards piled in a box for 99 cents each.
Another choice would be the key strips/pads from
X-Keys. This would be my first choice if price weren’t a consideration. But even the button strips are $100, and I wanted 2 of them.
. . What I did choose, back then, was the
Logitech G13 Programmable Gameboard.
. If you want a lot of key options without taking up a lot of space this is a very good choice. Aside from being very easy to program, you can also set the keypad lights to one of 4 different colors. Lets say RED for fighters, BLUE for sea planes, ORANGE for jets, and GREEN for general aviation. To be specific – you can make the 4 different keypad assignments AND have them change to one of the 4 colors. So if ALL of the keys are orange, you know that you’re in jet plane mode. I only used it for my flight sim, but it has a lot more capabilities.
GPS KEYBOARDBack then I wanted a GPS keyboard. And after finding a free program called
HIDMacros, I started to think about options.
Numeric keypads!!!Making the GPS keypad - Find a cheap keypad. Beg, borrow, or steal a Brother P-Touch. They come in multiple colors, so buy at least 2 more colors. Make your labels.
There are 2 problems with the P-Touch labels. They don't stick very well to smooth plastic, and the "printing" wears off with a lot of use. What I did was to print out a label and peel off the backing. Next I placed a strip of double sides Scotch tape on the underside of the P-Touch tape. The next to last step is to place a strip of regular clear (not frosted/invisible) tape over that to protect the "printing".
When you have the label trimmed with scissors to fit the face of the key, put the label on the tip of a small knife for positioning over the key. Place one edge at an angle on the key to correctly align it before pressing it down.
This is what I ended up with:
. . A word about HIDMacros. Using a numeric keypad has it's problems; trying to use BOTH your
keyboard keypad AND a separate numeric keypad may not work out all that well. It's a computer HID limitation relating to the [NUM LOCK] key, not an HIDMacros problem. Using all of the other keys on your keyboard is not a problem.
On the other hand you can use 5, 6, 7, or more keyboards or keypads and HIDMacros will keep them sorted. Without HIDMacros EACH KEYBORD will send the same key press as all of the other keyboards. Press “A” on any keyboard and the computer records an “A”. HIDMacros makes them send a different command depending on which keyboard you press the letter “A” on.
With HIDMacros, you can even leave all of the other keyboards plugged in without a problem, HIDMacros detects which key is pressed on which keyboard. Even when you aren’t using HIDMacros to send commands, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Type in a text field and you get text.
Instead of letting HIDMacros assign them alphanumeric names, make sure that YOU assign a descriptive name to each HID device. Trust me, you
WANT to do that.
One more thing – you can assign multiple commands to one key press.
And last - The programmer hasn’t worked on it for a while, so when you download it, burn it to a disk just to be safe.