I know, this isn’t a keyboard post, but lets be real, if there’s any communities that would know/care about programable foot pedals it would be this one.
I’m looking for a USB foot pedal, ideally something clicky-feeling, with decent-resistance, short travel distance. I only need 1 pedal but something with more than one is fine. I don’t need anything premium; I’m just browsing amazon I can’t really spot the difference between mushy garabage and decent-ish build quality.
Any recommendations?
(Non-USB recommendations are fine; hopefully this post will be useful to others considering a foot pedal)
I don’t have one but musical or guitar communities may have recommendations. Lot of foot controllers in that world.
Wide variety of feel and purpose there.
Are you looking for a bare pedal that you can wire to a controller, or something that’s ready to plug in?
For something that’s ready to be wired to a controller, I used a couple of these: https://www.amazon.com/Momentary-Operated-Controller-Industrial-Anti-Skid/dp/B07KN6GLYD
They’re a single firm clicky button, with relatively short travel. I never really had any issue with them being pressed too easily.
I had not even considered the other options! I guess I shouldve added more context.
I was thinking of a foot pedal that plugs in with a USB, that I could map to a keypress.
I’ve been slowly remapping my laptop keyboard, disabling arrow keys, esc, etc, in preperation for making a full mostly-seamless switch to ergo-mech. (I can’t afford to buy an ergo board only to realize I can’t handle the jump). Sadly some of my new chords are causing me more hand pain than I was already having. So I’m hoping to add a relatively cheap foot pedal as an intermediate step.
If you can solder, you can quite cheaply build your own ergo prototype, without habing to 3D print or buy PCBs: https://golem.hu/guide/cardboard-prototyping/
I did this, and am very happy. I got to stagger the keys as I like, place my thumb keys nicely, and know I can do it again easily and cheaply if I want something changed. Time’s not free of course, but I value the freedom this gives me.
If you are handy with basic soldering and some programming, you could easily wire these to a controller, and program them to a key. That’s what I did with the ones I had.
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I used the double version of this foot pedal for a while. The software lets you configure what key press it registers as.
What about the very, very cheap piano pedals? Those are usually just a on-off switch, which is output over a 6.3mm jack. Connect that to an Arduino or something which emulates a keyboard and Bob’s your uncle.
I bought mine off aliexpress, it’s 3 pedals and was like 30euro. Used it to switch virtual desktops, but now that’s on keeb…
Maybe a cheap one until you know it will be used a lot? Mine is used very sparingly…
Can you give us some more context here: What exactly does this pedal need to do?
Plugging in with USB would be nice. Being able to map it to a keyboard shortcut would also be nice. But if it just pretends to be a keyboard or mouse, regardless of what key it defaults to I can make it work with some software of my own.
