I chose a two-row design, each with four buttons for a total of eight hotkeys. This meant that I had a lot of freedom for designing the case so long as I avoided overhangs. The obvious tool of choice for building this was a 3D printer: fast, cheap, and with minimal design constraints. This is perfect, since most of what I need this device to control is OBS, which already has a great built-in hotkey manager. Fortunately though, I can replace the fancy USB communication with hotkeys from an off-the-shelf keyboard library and an Arduino.
#CUSTOM MACRO KEYBOARD SOFTWARE#
Much of the power of the Stream Deck is in the bundled software, and I’m not going to spend the time to develop a complete software package to replicate everything. When I say “basic” functionality, I do mean basic. The fancy ARM processor is going to be replaced with a dirt-cheap AVR, the touch-matrix keys are going to be replaced by basic mechanical switches, and the customizable RGB icons are going to be swapped out for relegendable keycaps. I wanted to make something that people could reasonably build at home, at a much lower cost than an off-the-shelf Stream Deck. There was a lot of engineering that went into making the Stream Deck, and I’m going to have to simplify. The #1 rule for this is cheap. The buttons on top allow the LCD to shine through for the backlight icons, and push down on a touch matrix to trigger button presses. Adafruit did an interesting breakdown on stream, but it’s essentially a mini computer using an Atmel ARM926EJ-S driving a 480×272 resolution LCD. The Stream Deck itself is a fantastic piece of tech. It could be used as a hotkey board for any program.
Fortunately I think I can make something that replicates the basic functionality for a fraction of that price: what I’m calling a “Stream Cheap”.Īlthough I’m focusing on using this as a replacement for a Stream Deck, at heart this is really a custom macro keyboard.
Unfortunately the Stream Deck is out of my price range, at a whopping $149.99 retail. By configuring the bundled software, users can set button icons and macros to control your casting software, send messages in the stream chat, launch programs, and much much more. The Stream Deck is a small device with 15 buttons, each of which has its own customizable RGB icon. I’ve been doing a little streaming on Twitch, and a lot of streamers I follow have something called an Elgato Stream Deck.
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