As @Airy's explained, it did swallow -- the D isn't being passed to the currently active app.
To see the difference in behaviour between Hot Key and USB Device Key triggers, do the following:
Make a new macro called "HK-A", add a single "Beep" action, add a Hot Key trigger and set it to A, disable the macro by unchecking the box above the trigger
Make a new macro called "USB-A", add a single "Beep" action, add an USB Device Key trigger and set it to the A key on your keyboard, disable the macro
Open a new document in TextEdit
Enable the "HK-A" macro, press your keyboard's A key a few times, see (and hear) what happens
Disable the "HK-A" macro
Enable the "USB-A" macro, press your keyboard's A key a few times, see (and hear) what happens
Thanks, the mapping to actuate the click works very well.
The problem is that if I assign a character from the mini keyboard, it's not exclusive to only the mini keyboard. For example, the mapping macro gets launched if I press the same character with my main key board which is not good. The mapping macro also gets triggered even if I’m not in Lightroom, which is also not good.
I thought swallow meant that would not happen, but obviously I’m mistaken. Is there a way to use the existing characters on the mini keyboard so it’s exclusive to only the mini device, i.e. not to my main keyboard?
A character is a character, no matter which device "sends" it. So a "hot key: A" will be triggered by any device sending an A.
USB Device Keys are specific to the device (so long as your Mac can differentiate between the devices!). Plug in two Apple keyboards and A on one is different to A on the other.
At the risk of repeating myself, have a look at the Wiki pages for Hot Key and USB Device Key triggers -- they explain things very well.
You put your macros in the "Global Macro" group, which is activated all the time. Read the manual's section about Macro Groups to learn more about controlling when a Group, and therefore the macros in the Group, is activated.
So, now we know that your keypad sends the same keycode as the main keyboard, unlike a 10-key, which Keyboard Maestro can tell is not the same numeral as the row of numerals (but from the 10-key on a separate pad or an extended keyboard).
What can you do?
Unfortunately, programming your keypad with Koolertran's notion of a macro (see the manual) is pretty limited. You can trap a key press or release or both and add a delay.
So you might consider using your keyboard's function keys to trigger the macros and defining the keypad to use those function keys, as the manual explains. That will trigger your Lightroom macros from either the keyboard or the keypad without interfering (because it swallows the hot key trigger) with Lightroom.
There are external keypads that include the 10-key pad and the editing pad (arrows and a few more keys) but I don’t have any experience with them. They probably aren’t a convenient layout for your situation anyway.
The undefined (default) state, as far as I can tell from the manual, is to send the ASCII character. The software lets you change that default mapping to other keys or build “macros” of key conditions and timings.
Ugh. It's for that reason alone that I would not call their products "fully programmable" because that means they aren't capable of sending a USB key code.
Of course, I would still want to test your theory by deleting all the actions for a key and seeing what happens.
You know, you might just try defining the keys with the extended keypad numerals (which Keyboard Maestro does distinguish from the row of numerals). The manual shows an extended keyboard so it looks like you can program those keys even if you don't have them.
Then you can use Hot Key triggers (tap the Koolertron key) to link to your Keyboard Maestro macros for each Lightroom button.
Thanks Mike, this sounds like a brilliant idea. Is it possible to combine numbers, as I will need more than just 10. I have to arrange with my friend to use his PC as I'm only mac. Hopefully I can figure out how to use the Koolertron software. Thanks again everyone, we'll see if we can get this to work.
Your keyboard has 22 keys. The numeric keypad has 18, and right next to it are Home, End, PgUp, PgDn which make 22.
Neither I nor mrpasini could find in the documentation anything indicating that you can set a key to send a USB key code or scan code, but I still recommend that you try that, because the manual doesn't look 100% complete in my opinion.
You can download the Mac version of amag from http://amazonfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/amag.app.zip (Koolertron's redirect didn't send me there but I did just download the Mac version). It requires installing a library, but there are instructions.
If you want to use the 10-key exclusively, think about defining Koolertron macros for more options. I don't think you can trigger modifier keypad combinations in Keyboard Maestro, though.
Anyway, you'll want the Mac utility to experiment, I'm sure.
Well, what seems to be a big problem has occurred. I installed the MYKB software for Mac which also required pasting some lines of text into "Terminal" something I was extremely nervous about as I've never done this before. (Additionally, the mac alerted me that it required I download special developer software which I did.)
The directions for the MYKB software were a bit unclear, and I understood it to say that entering the strings of text into terminal should proceed the installation of the software. Which is what I did. However after installing the software, it didn't work, so I added the strings of text into terminal again as I couldn't seem to delete what had been added previously.
I was initially encouraged as I was able to open the software and ascribe the keys on the extended numbers part of the keyboard to the mini keypad device.
The very bad news is when I went to open Lightroom the computer crashed. After two restarts now Lightroom crashes every time a launch attempt of LR is made. I tried restarting but no luck, LR crashes upon trying to open it. I unplugged the mini keypad, tried again, but no luck, threw the MYKB software in the trash, and still no luck opening LR.
Any suggestions? Yikes?! Is there a way to delete what has been entered via "Terminal"?
Yikes, I'm not feeling my usual sense of ease lol.
Press Command+Space and type Terminal and press enter/return key.
Type gcc --version and press enter/return key
Type
ruby -e "$(curl -
fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
and press enter/return key
If you are prompted for a password, please type the MAC administrator password. When you typed the password, the password may not be displayed. Please ignore and press enter/return key. Then wait until the installation library is installed.
Type brew install libusb and press enter/return key
Type brew install libusb-compat and press enter/return key
If the software still cannot connect to the keyboard, please type brew install libusb-compat in the terminal again and press enter/return key. At this time, the Mac may prompt the user "Do you want to allow amag to access the USB controller?" Please click “YES”
Done! You can connect Koolertron keyboard to your Mac and run the amag software
You could try reading the crash logs, but that's usually an exercise in frustration for anyone other than the team that wrote the app. But I'd unplug the keyboard for sure and see what happens then.
The Koolertron instructions are not very clear, but Rob has explained what they do. They install an environment called homebrew that makes it easier to maintain Unix software like the USB library that Koolertron requires for its amag software. So easy, in fact, that it wouldn't matter if you tried to reinstall using the same commands.
Lightroom has no software dependency on anything homebrew controls or even on homebrew itself. It's a native macOS app.
It isn't likely having the Koolertron attached bothered Lightroom on launch.
That doesn't help, I know. And there's far too much we don't know (which macOS, which Lightroom, etc.) about your environment to diagnose what happened.
But it is possible that your Lightroom preferences were corrupted and it's easy to reset those. Here's the standard procedure:
Close Lightroom. (Well, you can skip that!)
Hold down [Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom.
Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.
Close Lightroom.
Restart Lightroom.
That should let you launch Lightroom. Reset any preferences you may have customized. Alternately, you can restore them from a backup, of course.