This Dedicated Controller Can Help Your Zoom Meetings Go Smoothly
If, like so many others, you’re using Zoom software for meetings, you may want to consider building P_leriche’s custom controller.
Everybody hates meetings, but they seem to be an inescapable fact of today’s corporate culture. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, many office workers were under the false assumption that they’d at least be free from those meetings for a while. Then Zoom came along and crashed the party with their powerful, yet intuitive, video conferencing software. Now Zoom is being used for everything from business meetings to school lessons to church services. P_leriche has been using Zoom for the latter and wanted an easier way to work with the more complex functions. That’s why he developed this dedicated Zoom controller that provides quick access to a variety of software shortcuts.
This Zoom controller is based on a similar device that P_leriche created a few years ago. That device was designed to control a computer’s volume via USB by sending emulated keyboard shortcuts. This new project takes a similar approach, but with keyboard shortcuts that are tailored for Zoom software. There are a number of those shortcuts built into Zoom. If, for example, you’re in control of the Zoom meeting, you can push Alt + F1 to switch to the Speaker View. This controller saves you the trouble of having to remember the various available key combos by giving you a set of buttons that automatically enter them for you.
To make this Zoom controller yourself, you just need a handful of momentary push buttons, an Arduino Pro Micro, and some sort of enclosure. Each of the buttons gets connected to a pin on the Arduino in the typical manner; you can even use the Pro Micro’s internal pull-up resistors. P_leriche has posted the code you need to program the Arduino. When you upload it, you’ll use NicoHood’s HID-Project library to configure the Arduino as a USB HID, so it is recognized as a standard USB keyboard when plugged into a computer. P_leriche’s code is pre-configured for a variety of common Zoom shortcuts, but you can modify those if you’d like. You can even change them completely to work with other software if you don’t use Zoom.