Hey peeps,
I have two older x-keys devices : a USB Pro and Joystick one, they have around fourty keys each.
Previously I was using controllermate, but learned that it’s not compatible with Catalina or upwards, so my plan was to reprogram them on KM.
As it turns out, Big Sur seems to drastically change the way usb devices are addressed and KM can’t use them either unless the units are reprogrammed to output keys as game controllers; this however is limited to 32 keys per unit.
It seems telestream after talking to PI Engineering has resolved this issue, so I’m wondering if the KM developer could talk to PI and find out how they resolved it? It’s apparently an SDK issue?
I too am a long time user of ControllerMate, but I was eventually able to get it installed and working on Big Sur by disabling both Gatekeeper and System Integrity Protection.
It was some time ago that I did this, so can't remember all the steps, but a google search should tell you how to do the same. Once disabled, you can installed CM and the background helper, which is the bit that doesn't normally work without disabling SIP.
Everything seems to work fine for me, apart from importing previously saved .cmate files. I had to rebuild mine from scratch, but everything else seems to work ok. Maybe if you give it a go, you could post more of a step-by-step guide for others looking to do the same, but at least you know that it is possible now. Hope that helps.
Thanks, I will try that. Which x-keys do you have and did all the keys work?
I tried it a while back and remember having an issue where multiple keys would trigger the same command…
Hi. I don't own an X-Keys device myself as I use a Stream Deck for most things now, but from what I've read on the OrderedBytes website, it should work with products released up until the tail end of 2018. I've pasted a clipping below of the ones that should work...
The version of ControllerMate that you download from the P.I. Engineering website is basically a modified version of the full version that you could buy from OrderedBytes. I have the full version 4.11.1 from the OrderedBytes site that works with lots of different USB devices. Mine is working fine with PS4 controllers, and a Speedlink Black Widow HOTAS, so I would imagine that the supported X-keys products would run fine as well.
I'm in the process of migrating my setup from my cheesegrater Mac Pro to an M1 running Monterey and as we all know, there's this driver / kernel extension issue with Controllermate.
Been a long-time power user (+15000 building blocks in my setup), so really wanna get Controllermate to work as it's an integral part of my workflow.
I managed to successfully transfer my programming groups + pages to the new M1, you just gotta copy the .plist files for this from the old machine. Happy to elaborate if this is still relevant for you. Import function didn't work for me either.
Did you mean you got Controllermate to work in Big Sur? Are you on an intel-/based machine or on an M1?
Hi Peter. Yes, as you saw, I'm still using Intel and don't plan on changing to M1 anytime soon. I would be interested to know where the .plist file is stored though. I still have quite a few CM programming pages on a backup hard drive that would be good to try and salvage.
Hi guys, well I bit the bullet and upgraded to Monterey.
CM did install but the enumeration was all messed up. Tried to reprogram my X-keys from scratch but noticed that CM’s own USB driver wouldn’t load properly and was using apple’s generic hidd driver instead.
Certain keys would just not trigger, and other keys triggered the same ID.
So uninstalled it and tried KM: Lo and behold, KM sees both keyboards and is allowing me to reprogram them!
Still got a bunch of keys to go, but so far so good, and it’s much easier and quicker than CM.
Really loving KM so far, it’s very comprehensive but easy to program. Hats off!
I don’t know… I think mine is in hardware mode… it doesn’t trigger any actual keyboard keys, just codes, as I use KM to turn them into midi notes to trigger commands in my DAW (Cubase/Nuendo).
After using the ControllerMate software in Big Sure just for turning on and off the Leds on my XKey devices, i noticed it had a mistake when saving the profile that i made. It saved a LED as a button. After some fooling around with the plist it produces, i managed to change the button back into a led again by editing this .plist
But more bad news; after a while the app gets stuck and the LED's are not controlled anymore.
So i still hope KM will eventually can control the LED's on my XKeys....if the release a command line for example.
