Programming special characters and macros on the Ergodox

[GuilC]

Hi there,

As far as I know, it is not possible to program some special characters (like ä, ö, ü, é, è, etc.) or macros with massdrop’s ergodox configurator, even "Cut", "Copy" and "Paste" don’t work.
I’d like to know what would be the best (and easiest) way to program them. I have never compiled any layout myself, and really don’t know what to start with, I am working on a windows 7 system.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Guillaume

[madik]

Yeah that would be good to have more options in the Ergodox programming. I wanted to have power/sleep button in one of my layers and it was not working which was kind of disappointing.
I bet that there is a way of manual programming of the .hex file but that not what I am looking for. The way of Massdrop doing it is pretty good. Hopefully they will fix it and add more flexibility in the ergodox programming.

[davkol]

Don't expect pretty much anything from Massdrop. They haven't even updated the PCBs they sell (one of the most visible changes is presence of holes for stabilizers in the thumb clusters) and the online tool is too far behind upstream.

If you use the F13-F24 keys in the MD's online tool, they work as ordinary multimedia keys. I've just tested it at my GNU/Linux setup. Stuff advertised as multimedia keys has been fixed to certain extent in upstream AFAIK, see GitHub. It's supported in the excellent TMK firmware port as well.

As far as I know, it is not possible to program some special characters (like ä, ö, ü, é, è, etc.)

Yes, it isn't possible. Period. See the USB HID specification.

[alinh]

Are macros supported in upstream/tmk? I seem to remember that tried tmk(?) briefly when I first got my ergodox, couldn't get it to work so I settled for the MD firmware (tweaked a bit some shifted keys) for quicker results.

[davkol]

There are too many branches of both Ben's firmware and the TMK, it's a mess. It does work with some of them.

[Olivier Pons]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to develop macros.
The French AZERTY design is the exact definition of stupidity.
Especially when accessing developpers characters like "{}" and "[]"
You have to push the "altgr" key, which is the "alt" on the right (the one on the left doesn't work)

So it's 50 % of the reason why i bought ergodox : for ergonomic reasons and to be able to access easily specials characters.

If you follow the steps described to compile on the github everything will work but the hex generated file dont work with me so the last step was to get the source code from the ergodox Configurator page. From there just a small modification in the makefile and I've managed to generate an hex file that worked. Yay.
Now with that compiling, I would just like how to send a sequence of keys like "altgrdown" wait 30 ms "key_8" wait 30 ms "altgrup". I just dont have the time to analyse the code...

I didn't find a good & fast tutorial on "big principles" regarding the ergodox.

Any idea where i should look?

[davkol]

TMK

[Olivier Pons]

I've found everything and modified the source code to make macros, I'll post this on my blog in the weeks to come.