Macropad Project

This was a fun one. I’ve wanted to get a macropad for some time now. If you aren’t familiar with macropads, they are simply a small standalone keyboard, sometimes with a knob as an additional control type. I didn’t like most of the cheap products I saw on Amazon, but I also wasn’t looking to spend on the high end for it either. I wanted it to blend aesthetically with my mechanical keyboard and I wanted it to have customizable switches and keycaps so that I could push the style integration to its maximum. There’s also a bit of software called VIA, and compatibility with it was a must as well. This is what allows you to easily program the buttons, knobs and combination of the two however you’d like to perform keyboard shortcuts, recorded key macros, and more (hence the “marco” in macropad).

I’d been looking for some time, and one night was wandering around a combination of subreddits and Google when my search strings brought back the Momokai website. Specifically, a product page for the Aurora macropad from Momokai. I’d never heard of Momokai, but damned if they didn’t make a reasonably priced product that checked every one of my boxes and then some. This thing looked to have build quality way above what I’d been seeing in the same budget. It was an all aluminum design, and I could see from the images online that it disassembled very easily for customization. It only came in anodized black aluminum, but I’ve painted metal parts for other projects, and I knew I could make this thing look perfect for my desk setup.

I ordered it, and then got to work. I did several coats of paint on the parts to carefully bring it from stock black to a matte white that looks perfect next to the keyboard. Using left over keycaps from my mechanical keyboard set makes it look like it belongs right next to it. Here are a few images of the product as it is out of the box, and then my customized beauty:

Aurora macropad as Momokai designed it.

Aurora macropad [LDLW Edition] - View 1

Aurora macropad [LDLW Edition] - View 2

I’ve only just started to program the keys with shortcuts and macros. I want to do this slowly so that I build the muscle memory and make it a true productivity gain vs. just a fun little geek project. My first macro is a simple, but often used one. When I press #1, the macro executes keyboard shortcuts with millisecond pauses where needed to achieve the following workflow:

1. Bring Microsoft Teams to front most focus.
2. Toggle to the Chats pane of Teams.
3. Start a new chat.
4. Put the keyboard cursor focus in the Contact box for the chat.

That’s it. Once these steps happen in a matter of a second or two, no matter where I was on my computer, I’m now typing the name of the person I need to chat with and either starting a new chat or bringing up the existing chat thread. I use this many times a day in my work. It saves me both keystrokes and from getting distracted along the way. Sometimes my Cmd+Tab to Teams would land me in another channel or conversation that would take my focus away from chatting with the contact I need to talk to now for the task at hand.

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