Is this the right forum for this? Using a foot pedal to control apps?

Question

Level 1

25 points

Is this the right forum for this? Using a foot pedal to control apps?

My girlfriend is doing medical transcription - she listens to audio and she types. People who do this, often use a footpedal to play, pause, rewind, etc. while transcribing. I'm hoping to set her up on the Mac to do this, there are pedals which are Mac compatible, but I don't know what their limitations are, or what is possible.

I found some typical USB pedals, examples here:

http://www.altoedge.com/pedals/

...and I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck using them? Can they be configured to control certain menu functions in any application? such as using the keyboard shortcuts in the System Preferences to control certain commands in other applications? I'm thinking that I could make great use of a pedal like this to control any audio player - iTunes, Garage Band, or a 3rd party app I bought and love, "The Amazing Slow-Downer" so that I can use this to practice with the guitar, playing along with recordings, similar to how she would do the exact same thing while listening to recordings and typing.

I hope this is the right forum to bring this up. I don't have the pedal, I'm thinking of getting one, but I was hoping to get input from someone before springing for one. Thanks!!

MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB, Mac OS X (10.5.6), G-4 MDD 1.42 GHz dual, 2 GB

Posted on Jul 2, 2009 2:40 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Mr. Jingle Author

Level 1

25 points

Aug 1, 2009 3:04 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Well, this took me a while to get solved, but it is indeed solved.

I tried USB Overdrive and it could, and perhaps should work, but apparently it will not. When adding a device, it seems that USB Overdrive is not set up to handle any input device that does not register itself as either a Mouse or a Joystick. The VEC USB Footpedal that I'm using is "Device type: Other".

So, I went for Quickeys. And Quickeys can do it all. It did recognize the device, I was able to assign it to the scope of the particular audio playback app I wanted to use (Amazing Slow Downer OS X - which is truly amazing. Any musicians reading this who are looking for a way to learn pieces by ear, this does it better than anything else I've seen yet).

I created a shortcut in Quickeys for the ASD app; added the middle button of the foot pedal as the trigger; set one step, entering 'space bar' as the step (which toggles playback, similar to many audio players).

It all worked.

Quickeys is very confusing and seemingly featured with an endless array of options. Enter at your own risk. Ask me for help. This was the only way to get it done that I could find. I did write to the author of USB Overdrive asking him to please support additional devices as I did find some traction from gamers who like to use a foot pedal in addition to other input devices. There was a Windows-only management utility for the foot pedal that was intended for custom input, assigning the buttons to any keyboard input or mouse click event. It would be nice to have a simple and easy to use utility like this. But, Quickeys did do the job.

Thanks for your help, you guys!!!

Reply

Answer 2

DKay

Level 1

9 points

Oct 23, 2009 3:35 AM in response to Mr. Jingle

I'm a musician who wants to use a foot controller to scroll text pages using something like Microsoft Powerpoint - but actually txt files in any application that the footpedal could recognise would work. The problem is that although I only need it to be able to do two things - forward and back - there is no interfacing software around that allows it to do this - the USB devise is recognised - but not the commands the three pedals generates - basically even if the computer could be fooled into thinking this device was a mouse, I'd be able to scroll forwards at least with the foot-pedal. Can't be rocket science to have get an apple script that would do the job... anyone got any ideas??

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 2, 2009 3:25 PM in response to Mr. Jingle

In order for a pedal to control applications there has to be a driver: possibly some pedals may come with a program which allows this, rather in the way the Microsoft Mouse or USB Overdrive allow you to customize mouse and trackball buttons. It seem probable that these wouldn't reconize a pedal, though. QuicKeys might, but it's not cheap, though it is very powerful. You would have to do some research to find out exactly what you can do with different programs; but I doubt you can do anything within OSX by itself.

Reply

Answer 4

Mr. Jingle Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 8, 2009 3:00 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Well, the pedal arrived. I tried using it for my intended purpose, to playback music, particularly small samples of music and, using a freeware transcription application, it works. The application recognized the pedal out of the box.

The transcription software is basically an integrated audio player with some other things integrated (linking documents, email, ftp or other protocol the fetch new audio recordings, among others), but all I need is an audio player. This freeware transcription software does support things like placing a bookmark and changing speed, which is directly applicable to my purpose, so I'm reasonably happy.

The pedal came with no software, no driver and no way to use it for anything else, that I can see. The supplier does offer a Windows driver/app for mapping the buttons to different events, but I haven't anything to do that with on my Mac. So, I'm still on a quest to see how to get some use out of this thing without it being strictly tied to transcription software. The company who supplies the pedal mentions use for gaming and the descriptive blurb about the pedal mentions that it can be used to execute any key combination or mouse click, which would be great. But, they don't make any provision for that using my Mac.

So, now I'm trying to find out if there's a way to monitor what this input is - through the terminal? and if I can capture just what this input is, then maybe I can write my own preferences panel. That's my hope at this point. That, or try Quick Keys.

Message was edited by: Mr. Jingle

Reply

Answer 5

Network 23

Level 6

12,351 points

Jul 8, 2009 4:46 PM in response to Mr. Jingle

You should definitely try Roger's suggestion of USB Overdrive. Just playing around with that software may be able to give you some insight into the signals being sent by the pedal. It's sort of a generic USB driver that detects the available controls on a plugged-in USB device and lets you map to them.

Reply