A foot pedal keyboard, using Korg EC5, Arduino and Python Converts pedal button events into operating system virtual keyboard sequences.
Control media editing software, such as Adobe Photosop and Premiere, with your foot
Use the foot keyboard pedal to send macros to a code IDE, such as Visual Studio Code
Control playback with your foot, without stopping the practice. The hands stay on the instrument (e.g, Bass guitar) and hitting a foot pedal rewinds the playback to the start.
For example: If Pedal A is clicked (pressed and released) then the python driver will generate a Media Prev keyboard stroke on the operating system. A musician can then control music playback by using his/her feet, a very natural way for musicians that use foot pedals for effects and volume control, when playing instruments such as guitar, bass guitar and keyboards.
Originally, I wanted to be able to able to control Practice#, my open source practice application, with my feet - instead of getting out of practice position and having to use my hands in order control the application With Practice# the setup is as followes:
- Pedal A -> Look back (key = l)
- Pedal B -> Rewind a few seconds back (key = ,)
- Pedal C -> Toggle Play / Pause (key = space)
- Pedal D -> Slow down (key = s)
- Pedal E -> Speed up (key = f)
But I decided to make a more generic solution. The python driver supoorts dynamic supports any desktop application through an easy to configure json file (key-mappings.json). The default configuration file contains Chrome mappings - a tab can be closed with Pedal E!
A foot keyboard can provide extra keys to use in games such as first person shooters (FPS).
For example: Pedal A could be assigned to a crouch action, or to a series of keyboard actions that would be executed in sequence
Bill Of Materials, wiring schematics and other details: https://github.com/bigman73/footpedalkeyboard/wiki
I took some direction and ideas from a similar project done by Sylvain Wallez: https://bluxte.net/musings/2016/07/29/usb-foot-keyboard/