deskthority

I must be doing something terribly wrong, but the couple of arduinos I have takes few seconds to boot from power-off

That's not a bad idea. It will be a nice companion of a small keyboards or an extension for some macros. As davkol said a couple of 5x5 could be a sweet and tiny splitted keyboard.

The Sidekick seems like the best option of those two. Personally, I prefer a numpad with an extra row of keys on top, like the Leopold:
But the Sidekick allows for a lot of flexibility without having to worry about layers.

I like the plain numpad layout. However I would suggest triple zero key instead of the double zeros. Any rough price estimation?

fyx wrote:I like the plain numpad layout. However I would suggest triple zero key instead of the double zeros. Any rough price estimation?

Since, it will be using a Teensy, with custom firmware, all of the keys are able to be remapped. While you may find it difficult to locate a triple 0 keycap, you can surely make the key register as three zeros.

I just sent the order for the first prototype. I'll keep you posted on this.

pyrelink wrote:Since, it will be using a Teensy, with custom firmware, all of the keys are able to be remapped. While you may find it difficult to locate a triple 0 keycap, you can surely make the key register as three zeros.

That sounds pretty great, thank you.

Hey, new guy here. Recently got my first mech but have been considering building a programmable numpad for a couple of weeks. As an animation student, I want something portable with all my hotkeys stored so I can just plug and play across different OS's and a numpad would leave plenty of deskspace for a graphics tablet. My preference would be the 60% companion.

Also, with the teensy, could I set up several layers I could toggle between? e.g. to have hotkeys for different applications.

yes of course the numpad would be 100% customizable, with layers too

I think adding a top row to the Sidekick layout would add significant utility:
However, I'd be in for one either way.

this is actually very nice.

I'm waiting for the prototypes to show up at my doorstep. I'll keep you posted!

I think the top 4 buttons could be like FN/shift, to minimise footprint.

Edit: locking cherrys, hell yeah! Also, I think we should leave controller selection open, if possible - I would rather attempt to self program a pic than use a teensy. (cheaper )

DerpyDash_xAD wrote:I think the top 4 buttons could be like FN/shift, to minimise footprint.

Edit: locking cherrys, hell yeah! Also, I think we should leave controller selection open, if possible - I would rather attempt to self program a pic than use a teensy. (cheaper )

Again, any buttons you want, can be programmed on the numpad. So you can have FN/Shift if you want, or something else entirely. This will be Teensy based as its one of the easier (and not too expensive) methods available. There is a thread here where you can find cheaper Teensy alternatives. Including a $4 or something board from Hong Kong, that requires only a little bit of extra effort to work...

How are the prototypes coming along?
Thinking of maybe get one of these numpads and then perhaps one of the group builds you are working on.

I'm waiting for the CNC to come to my place to ease the prototyping phase

What are these numpads supposed to be used for? If it’s data entry type jobs, I think you could do a *lot* better. Ideally you’d want to ask some folks who actually need to type numbers into spreadsheets for a living, but here’s one stab:

it's a small project, we are not going to produce thousands of these. I'm not an avid numpad user, the suggested layouts came out from a discussion on another thread. I more than welcome any suggestion from spreadsheeters

I would take on, but depends on the price

Surely you've noticed that the last post to this thread was a year and half ago?!

I would prefer the Sidekick.

But would it be possible to split the sidekick into two parts (1x arrow - 1x numpad)?
Could be better because you are more flexible at positioning it

derp

I can, but most time Im zoomed so that Ive only text. Will keep an eye on the date stamp