I kinda want to hook one up to raspberry pi for some home control, but I’m not sure if the software to configure it works on Linux (or how it even presents itself HID-device wise)
I’m sure it’ll eventually be reverse engineered and have some custom drivers on github soon, but a quick google came up empty for this new device.
Edit: Oh I just realized this hasn’t been released yet, I saw the “buy now” button and assumed it was.
It’s $269.99 and has 9 programmable buttons. It’s designed to control rent-seeking apps like Photoshop.
The Streamdeck XL costs $200 and has 32 programmable buttons. I’m using it to control my dorm room through Home-Assistant, and my robot camera through Bitfocus Companion.
With Linux over the years, I have learned to ignore all hardware marketing as (basically) scammers. The supporting software is the important part. If the software is not open source, the product is only available to rent and likely includes or has the potential to become an extortion scam of subscription parasites. When I shop for products now, I do so by searching for the open source software first. Once I find a large project with several contributors, I git clone the repo and then I run an app called
gourceon the command line. Gource creates a 3d visualization of the project over time and its commit history. Have a look at the Linux kernel some time or just watch a video of someone that has uploaded the visualization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iFnzr73XXkWith the actual visualization, you can zoom in and select the individuals or watch branches specifically. The trick is to get an idea of who the main contributors are in the various spaces and how consistent they are. Find who is working on what hardware and how they are working on it. Some times you’ll see a person comes in and only makes a single commit or a few that contain everything for a device and then they disappear. These are often subcontracted devs that a company hires and gives a checklist. Issues, bugs, and unsupported features are unlikely to get fixed unless you see someone else that is making commits in this space. What you’re really looking for is one of the main project devs that makes ongoing commits to some specific hardware over longer amounts of time and fairly recently. It means they have the device in question. That generally means the device has or will have excellent support in the long term. It also generally means the person either really liked the product or the company is smart enough to supply the dev with the device or supporting documentation.
Sorry if this seems unsolicited. It took me a long time to break out of the hardware spec shopping fallacy and all of the troubles it can cause. Prioritizing true ownership and shopping for the software first is a far more enjoyable life experience. It likely won’t help in this niche, but for computers in general use: https://linux-hardware.org/
You will likely find that search engines attempt to obfuscate this information. Expect that. Use offline open source LLM’s, ask the community, or more advance searching methods to find relevant info. Both m$ and the goo are the two biggest beneficiaries of the proprietary software ecosystem and they are the only two web crawlers that exist at relevant scale. All search engines use one or both of these sources either directly or by proxy.
They only list support for Windows and MacOS on their site. The answer is almost certainly no, it doesn’t work with Linux. People may reverse engineer it like they did with the Stream Deck or GoXLR devices, but don’t hold your breath. Your best alternative would be something like this: https://drop.com/buy/megalodon-doio-hot-swappable-rgb-30-keyboard?defaultSelectionIds=970727
EDIT: Or, you could build your own without the need of a raspberry pi using something like this: https://www.instructables.com/STREAM-DECK-KILLER-and-OpenSource/
I’m no stranger to DIY nor reverse engineering, so I may still buy it as a winter weekend project.
DIY is difficult because I want real buttons, as well as customizable mini displays (like the Optimus keyboard of Olde)
As long as it shows up as a normal HID keyboard, and the upload protocol is reverse engineered, I’ll be happy.
Maybe I’ll get one and use the return policy to find out.
The main thing I have learned after switching to Linux full-time is that weird, proprietary hardware like this is almost never a good idea, for many reasons. It’s very easy to make labels for keys if you really want to, and if you need more functionality, having more buttons instead of layers is always going to be faster to learn and use. Especially if you are trying to use this as a home automation interface, it’s probably a better idea to have either a touch screen or a separate screen and keypad.
Sure, this thing looks nice, but in a couple years (at most) it will be e-waste.
I kinda suspect it won’t show up as a normal HID keyboard, I had some issues with that with a Razer mouse/keyboard, I think they did some proprietary BS to make sure the shortcuts worked for actions that couldn’t be done via keypresses. But I hope it does! It would be cool to see.
DIY is difficult
Well, arguably it’s difficult at first then become much easier BUT I understand one might not want to dedicate time to it. There are solutions though to buy hardware that is open hardware and with open-source firmware. I personally do NOT recommend reverse engineering except for the pursuit of knowledge. I do NOT recommend RE for “liberating” products because even though it is amazing, it is adversarial. The companies are making money still while NOT supporting Linux or even preventing it from being supported by the community without them spending a cent. That’s fine, that’s their strategy. I don’t approve of it but from a business standpoint I can understand it.
What I do recommend though is spending few minutes looking for proper alternatives. I clarified that a bit in another thread about inputs, cf https://lemmy.world/comment/12550034 so please consider having a look.
TL;DR: DIY/RE can be too much work but there are open hardware with open-source firmware projects sold on e.g https://crowdsupply.com which are “just” plug&play.
Not surprised you’re not finding Linux compatibility info. It looks like it was just announced. Logitech tends to not support Linux for their customization software, but I presume Solaar will add support for this device eventually.
No. It does not.
On Linux you use a utility called Piper and a background daemon ratbagd to change settings of Logitech mice so I’d check if your products are supported by that.
Solaar supports the dongles but has less settings than Piper.
Yeahhhhh thats a pretty niche product and is basically a HID driver interface, so any functionality would have to be rebuilt from the ground up on Linux. It’ll certainly take some time, if theres enough interest to make it worthwhile to someone.
Logitech does not support Linux.
Most of the current compatibility of Logitech devices comes from, Linux devs reverse engineering their software, USB standards or from default programing stored in the device.
