Keyboard Macro Mat

Step 1

We made this at the Hack U! Hackathon event held in our college, organised by Yahoo! Japan. We wanted to make something which brought fun to mundane tasks. This started out as a door mat for a party where the host would send you a set of dance moves which you would need to perform at the doorstep to unlock the door. This then evolved into a more serious productivity gadget (which can still be used for fun) for a desk setting.

Step 2

There are 5 independent zones which can trigger upto 5 different saved macros across all platforms as the device appears as an HID Device (works with Windows/Linux/Mac).

The other three pads have buttons underneath them to trigger them.

Each pad has two Pushbuttons connected in Parallel in order to provide a Consistent and Reliable Click.

The bottom left and bottom right pads are pressure sensitive and are sensed using piezo coins.

Step 3

The pads are mapped to different controls for different use cases.

Conclusions

Similarly, controls were mapped for Gmail, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Emoji. The mapping are reconfigurable and can be done for any existing keyboard shortcut or key combination.