I Have Bought What May Be The Best Thing That Has Ever Been Made

Just look at it! Look at it!

It’s a keypad with two knobs on it.

It’s USB C.

And looks what happens when I plug it in. Exactly! Apparently nothing! There are no LEDs! Do you know how rare it is to find a product, any product, that doesn’t have any LED lights these days?

It works without any drivers — it’s a normal USB HID device. And it’s got mechanical keys, so it’s satisfyingly clicky. Just listen:

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So the keys are mapped to a-l because why not, and the knobs are 1/3 and 4/6 because why not, and you can even click the knobs, and that gives you 2/5.

What am I using this wonder of engineering for, you’re asking? I’m thinking of building an alarm clock, and they keypad is convenient for setting the alarm (you hit 9 RET for 9 in the morning and 1450 RET for ten to three in the afternoon. For someone like me who rarely gets up at the same time two days in a row, I find that this is, by far, the most efficient way to set an alarm clock (and I’ve been using that for decades, but with a different numpad setup).

And the knobs? Having one of them would be really convenient for adjusting the music volume, and to pause/unpause the music. The other knob? Er… Well, lights on/off? I’m not sure. I guess I could use them to dim the lights, just for fun, but I’m not really into dimming lights.

So I’m thinking of building a box with a little 4″ screen and then mounting this keypad in the top, and then putting a Raspberry Pi W Zero inside, or something.

Anyway, I unfortunately got this 12 Key Mini Keyboard One Handed Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Multifunctional Shortcut Programmable Macro Keyboard with Button for Vista Macos (Black) from Amazon (phooey), but whatchagonnado. I especially liked this review:

Tee hee. I surmise from the other reviews that there’s a QR code that leads you to some Windows software for remapping the keys? And that’s full of viruses?

It’s a normal USB HID device, surely you can remap that on any OS without any special software?

Anyway!

This is the first time I’ve bought something, ever, that has no annoyances.

For instance, the first numpad I bought when I started thinking about this project was this:

It’s USB HID, and it works fine… but IT BEEPS LOUDLY and there are LEDS THAT SHINE BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN and they NEVER TURN OFF.

So… I guess that’s perfect for what it’s intended to be used for (a door calling system or something), but not for this thing I’m doing here, and they seldom mention details like that on the web site.

Or this thing, which I was considering for a related little project… it was described as being USB HID, but it’s not — it requires a Windows driver.

And so on.

ANYWAY.

So there.