One goal of this newsletter is to let you know about interesting gadgets you might want to own.
My birthday is when I generally ask for gadgets for my work-from-home setup. For several years in a row, it was a monitor until I had three.
Another year it was a nice desk lamp. Another, a microphone on a boom.
This latest was a device called a Stream Deck.
It is a small panel that sits on your desk with buttons on it. You can get it with six, fifteen or, thirty-two buttons. The fifteen button version seems to be the most common and is what I have.
You can program each button to have a keyboard shortcut key.
Many programs have shortcut keys for power users. For example, on Windows machines holding down the Window button and then pressing the letter E brings up the Windows Explorer. Control-C copies text, while Control-V pastes text. If you know only two, know those last two. They will save you a ton of time.
With a Stream Deck, you can code the Windows+E into a key and then by pressing that key, the File Explorer appears.
In Evernote, ALT-CONTROL-N creates a new note no matter what app you are in. I always liked that one, but could never remember it. Now it is a push button away.
And I have a lot more then 15 buttons. I can have 15 pages of buttons. What’s more, I can have folders, where one button opens a folder of even more buttons. It is not limitless but often seems that way.
You can choose your own images for the button, even make your own. And they can be automated, and show the state of the button (for example Mute/Unmute).
Steam Deck was built to YouTube and other Streamers; more about that in a future newsletter. For us non-streams though it can be handy for many things. It is really nice in Zoom calls where things like mute, camera on, camera off, are just a button away.
You can also control mute or camera other any other shortcut with a pedal.
For those who need fine adjustment in applications, like PhotoShop or a video editing software, they have a new Steam Deck with a dial on it.
I’ve coded in where a button of gives me types the current date and time into whatever app I have open. Another could hold my email address when filling in forms.
And if you have a work and home computer simply by plugging into the other machine, the appearance and key assignments can all change. I have entirely different needs for it at work. After only a few months I find it more useful there then on my home system. If I were to get back into video editing though, I’d find it very useful at home too. Video editing has a host of keyboard shortcuts to improve your work flow.
Churches increasingly have Stream Decks in their A/V booth to switch cameras, advance slides and more to make the online service smoother and easier for volunteers to run.
Feel free to leave comments if you have any questions. And please share this post, or the entire newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it.
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