Following up on the Velleman post, I believe this USB device would be excellent for remote control inputs. I read about it being deployed and thought it would be perfect for mAirList. Basically, it emulates the keyboard functions.
There is no programming. You simply short a specific lead to ground for F1, another for F2, and so on. To interface to mAirlist, you would need to add “hotkeys” in Config/Remote Control and then assign F1, F2, F3 to different tasks. Simple.
The problem about devices that emulate a keyboard is that they will always interfer with your primary keyboard; that is, the shortcuts used on the secondary keyboard cannot be used on the primary keyboard anymore. For example, when you use F1 for the GPI device, the F1 key is lost for normal operation.
I’d rather use one of the joystick-based devices like the one mentioned here:
I’m a great fan of Xkeys (www.xkeys.com), I have a 20 key pad at home and at work (TV) we use two 50 keys in series.
Yes, it does use keyboard emulation, but I do have my global shortcuts to be oddities such as Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc. Works extremely well for my mAirlist setup. Players start/stop/next, 12 cartwall starts and VT start/stop/cancel etc.