How to use keypad as an independent game controller

[Masterius]

I would like to use something like a game keypad that would function as a game controller independent of the main keyboard. For instance, if I am programming controls using LINDA and the main keyboard "G" key toggles the landing gear, I could program the secondary keypad's "G" for a different function.

What I want to do is use the secondary game keypad to expand my options, and use it primarily to control Chaseplane views.

[ark]

12 hours ago, Masterius said:

I would like to use something like a game keypad that would function as a game controller independent of the main keyboard. For instance, if I am programming controls using LINDA and the main keyboard "G" key toggles the landing gear, I could program the secondary keypad's "G" for a different function.

What I want to do is use the secondary game keypad to expand my options, and use it primarily to control Chaseplane views.

Might be worth taking at look at Touch Portal: https://www.touch-portal.com/

Al

[Bob Scott]

You'd need a keypad that's programmable--you can't differentiate the "G" key, for example, between two keyboards that send the standard keycodes without resorting to some serious low-level programming.  But if the keypad allows you to program it's firmware to send something other than the "G" keycode when pressing that key, you can make that work.

[Masterius]

1 hour ago, ark said:

Might be worth taking at look at Touch Portal: https://www.touch-portal.com/

Al

 

10 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

You'd need a keypad that's programmable--you can't differentiate the "G" key, for example, between two keyboards that send the standard keycodes without resorting to some serious low-level programming.  But if the keypad allows you to program it's firmware to send something other than the "G" keycode when pressing that key, you can make that work.

Thank you both for your input. I decided to try the Redragon K585 DITI keypad and that seems to work exactly as I'd hoped. Not the easiest thing to learn and use as the vendor documentation is, ummm...a wee bit on the scanty side. However, Google to the rescue! 😝

My timing for that was rather serendipitous as well, since I seem to have hit some sort of Prime day sale. So far this seems to be doing the trick. Now I'm just fumbling my way learning Chaseplane so I can begin using the keypad to program views. 😖

Thanks again!

~Masterius

[Allard]

I use a Streamdeck XL for this. It has 32 keys but since you can create menus and folders you can assign a virtual limetless number of commands to these keys.
Each key has its own display so you can have each key show its function, you can even display the status of sim variables on them.

[Masterius]

21 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

I use a Streamdeck XL for this. It has 32 keys but since you can create menus and folders you can assign a virtual limetless number of commands to these keys.
Each key has its own display so you can have each key show its function, you can even display the status of sim variables on them.

I checked it out and it looks really spiffy. It'd definitely do what I wanted. But it's almost $200, so I'm likely to take a pass on this for a while.

Thanks for the info though! It's very much appreciated!

~Masterius

[Allard]

1 hour ago, Masterius said:

I checked it out and it looks really spiffy. It'd definitely do what I wanted. But it's almost $200, so I'm likely to take a pass on this for a while.

Thanks for the info though! It's very much appreciated!

~Masterius

it's expensive indeed but they wrork great. At first I spend a lot of time configuring those but I discovered Flightsim.to has many profiles already. Some of these do require AxisandOhs for some advanced aicraft like the PMDG 737.
Sometimes they are available for a bit less, but they won't ever be really cheap I guess.