'L1 Tech Deck' Devember Project

I don’t know if this is allowed under the Devember rules since it’s a partly hardware thing, but I plan to use one of these mini Keybow kits from Pimoroni (they are based very near to me as it happens) and a Pi zero I have laying around to make a mini media control keypad.

My main use case is that I often listen to the L1 news in bed to help unwind before going to sleep. Constant news on the dystopian state of tech is probably not the best thing to be listening to but I have had no nightmares so far :wink: .

My PC is next to my bed but I often find I want to rewind a section if my mind trails off. I usually use the arrow keys to jump back a bit but that requires climbing out of bed every so often. Using a whole second keyboard for this purpose is very awkward, so I plan to make this little ‘L1 Tech Deck’ instead.

I am not very experienced with writing my own code, and there is essentially pre made software with the kit and guides on doing various macros using Lua so it’s a very much a beginner project, but good for a Level 1 project as it were.
It will be interesting getting all the features I want from only three keys:

  • Pause/Play,

  • Skip back/forward 5 seconds

  • Shortcut to the latest L1 News video

  • Next/previous video

  • Maybe a feature for remembering a particular video to jump to in the playlist (I occasionally watch old news videos if I have watched all the new ones, currently working backwards through the playlist slowly).

  • Maybe move to a different podcast playlist to apply all the previous features to.

Since I’m really a 3D printing guy, I will be making a custom case and custom key caps including L1 logo keycap.

Again I don’t know if this is an allowable devember project but I’m doing it anyway so there.

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