kinesis advantage macro activation combo

[shockwave]

Hello, Everyone

I've been lurking for about week in these forums, reading various posts by the likes of sordna, input nirvana, ripster, etc. I made my way here while reading about the Kinesis Advantage (which, by the way, came in the mail yesterday, after work).

I'm creating this first thread to ask a question about the kinesis advantage's macros and their activations:

I would like to setup my Kinesis such that i can activate macros using a combination of the capslock key and another normal key. I've read the manual for the Advantage here:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/support/advantage-usb-manual_10-06.pdf

My attempts went something like so:
- ATTEMPT A -
Remap the capslock key as a control key. Then, when creating the macro, simply hold the capslock key and the other activation key (such a 'j'). After I program the macro, I tested that pressing capslock and the j key activated the store macro, and it did. However, the macro would also activate if I were to press any of the normal control keys plus the j key. Since I only want the capslock to be used as the macro activation key, that wouldn't work for me (I use control for regular application shortcuts, so I can't use them for macro activation)

- ATTEMP B -
My second attempt was to map the activation to the Windows Key. But, I run into a similar issue as attempt #1, where both the capslock and the windows key can be used as the first part of the macro activation.
 
- MORE ATTEMPTS -
I tried moving the control/alt/windows-key around, by remapping them to other locations, and then mapping one of those meta keys to the capslock, and then using a capslock combination with another key as the macro activation. The capslock+other-key combination works to activate the macro; the problem is that the original meta key, on which the capslock macro is based, still serves to activate the macro, and I don't want that.

WHAT DO I WANT TO ACCOMPLISH
I would like to use the capslock, in combination with another key, to activate macros. However, I don't want to use any of the meta keys (control/alt/super) to also activate that macro. Is there a way to accomplish this?

[hoggy]

Welcome to Geekhack!

There's been some 'controversy' over this in the past. Why don't you send kinesis an email?  Their customer service is pretty good.  I'm sure some of us would be interested in their answer.

[shockwave]

hoggy,  

I've just sent an email to Kinesis about this, as you suggested.

I'll post their answer about it, when I hear from them.

Regards

[shockwave]

Ok, so I contacted Kinesis. I got a nice, friendly, reply from Rick. I essentially asked the same question I asked here. Once he replied, as asked him if he was OK with me sharing his reply here, in geekhack. He graciously agreed. So, here's his reply:

[...] if you copy a modifier key (Ctrl, Alt, Super) to Caps Lock (or any other location), then create a Macro in combination with a non-modifier key, it will also affect the original Modifier key since it’s a copy or duplicate key. So as you noted, if you copy Ctrl to Caps lock, then create a Macro for Caps Lock + J, the same macro will occur when pressing the original Ctrl key + J.
 
Do you have a footswitch? http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/fs-non-program.htm
 
If so, one possible solution is to simply use the footswitch for Macro’s. One thing a lot of customers do with a footswitch is take advantage of the second layer of the keyboard. Because there is an embedded layer there are essentially two layers or layouts of the keyboard, or two actions for every key. The footswitch by default functions as a Keypad Shift (which activates the embedded layer). This allows a lot more possibilities as far as macros go. For example, the bottom layer “J” could be set for a macro and the top layer would simply produce the letter “J”. You could use the footswitch essentially as a modifier by pressing it down, then tapping the letter “J” with your finger and it will produce the macro. This could be a great solution since it won’t affect any of your modifier keys or any of the top layer keys.
 
Other than that, I don’t see any solution other than simply creating macros with Caps lock (remapped as Ctrl) and non-modifier keys that you normally wouldn’t use. For example, perhaps Caps Lock + “4” could be a macro. You normally wouldn’t press Ctrl + 4 so it wouldn’t create any conflicts with your regular Ctrl key (hopefully that makes sense).
 
I personally do something similar, as I have a lot of macros in my keyboard. Most of them are Ctrl or Alt + a number, since in the programs I use I would never use those combinations in regular use.

As a nugget for other Kinesis Advantage owners, here's something else he mentioned:

Eventually we would like to improve the programming capability of the keyboard and we’re actually working on a few cool things now. Ideally we’d like to have every single key  on the keyboard programmable and copied keys would be independent from the originals.

I hope we'll be able to upgrade our current Advantages with some of the new functionality. :hippie: