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Interactive homebrew LCL navigation devices

James_B

Alright, so the friendly people at the meta discussion site for Discourse itself helped me score a cool tip.

When you are on a normal page not editing text such as when viewing this thread, try pressing the question mark on your keyboard.

Did it work?

The inner mad scientist in me now compels me to take the MaKey MaKey I got for the last LCL and come up with a custom homebrew controller to help me quickly navigate Discourse and keep me in a fun and engaged mood.

So far, I'm looking at these hotkeys that we have access to in Discourse:

g and then h - jump to home
g and then u - jump to unread messages
u - back
k/j - up/down
c - new topic
/ - search
s - share topic 
shift + s - share post
r - reply to topic
l - like post

It appears as though some of the controls are buggy, this is still kind of a beta feature it looks like.

This will involve reprogramming the settings.h file in the MaKey MaKey sketch using the Arduino IDE.

If you need help reprogramming your MaKey MaKey, let me know. It might take some steps to get working on your computer, but it is easey peasey after that. I will update with a basic tutorial to recreate or remix my homebrew LCL device after I get it made, and will include links to resources for MaKey reprogramming.

Please share if you have any ideas or if you have your own homebrew device just for Discourse or LCL! MaKey MaKey not required, I'm just using one for mine.