Enhancing Tulip Player usability with customizable keyboards!

[Akira]

Hello Everyone,

This is like a hobby post.

Some times it’s a little bit annoying to touch the display to control Tulip Player such as clicking “Next”, “Go back” and “Complete” button. Frontline operators sometimes wears gloves during their operations. So, some customers asked me if there are any ways to trigger some actions with pressing one physical key on Tulip Player.

So, I found some keyboards which can change keymaps using QMK Configurator or VIA that enables us to control Tulip Player like clicking next button, opening Player menu and so on.

I bought EPOMAKER EK21, EPOMAKER EK21 which is a ten-key keyboard and the keymaps are configurable. This keyboard supports some layers to change keymaps. So, I created a Tulip layer as Layer 2 like below.

For example, If I press Enter(M1) key, a macro of the key sends “next{enter}” to my Tulip Player and my device trigger which saved in the base layout catches the keyboard input as a barcode scanner.

In short, you can set any triggers to one physical key. You can pause, cancel and complete app. Or you can count up a number of production and so on. If you don’t want to buy a keyboard, you can assign a macro to a physical key like F7 using AutoHotkey , https://www.autohotkey.com/.

Kind Regards,
Akira Takahashi

[Beth]

I love this idea! It’s a great alternative to a foot pedal as well, and gives some additional configurability since you can customize multiple keys how you want.

This may be something that helps @Fiora and @AquaMaofian who were asking about using keyboard shortcuts to navigate in Tulip Player Shortcuts in app

[freedman]

I love this @Akira !! Thanks for sharing and writing it up so nicely. Now you’ve got me thinking that I want to try it with something like this, where the images of the keys themselves are programmable:

[Akira]

Oh! what a fancy keyboard!! If you try it, please show us. I think the images of the keys are essential.

Kind Regards,
Akira Takahashi