Elgato Stream Deck Control of Custom SoundPads: Super Early Test

Edit: Added a Linux Appimage of the companion app.

Greetings Patrons,

I'm not sure how many of you are interested in this, but I like tinkering with things and I must admit I went down a bit of a rabbit hole.

A couple of you have asked for Stream Deck integration with Custom SoundPads. I've done some really preliminary testing and, if you're game, I've got something for you to play around with. I really have no idea how useful this might be, but it was fun to work on for a bit.

If you don't have a Stream Deck, or have no interest in using one, you can safely stop reading now. The rest will be of little interest!

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Ok, all three of you left...

TL;DR - The quick version of instructions to use with Stream Deck:

1. Download the Tabletop Audio - Stream Deck Companion app for Mac or PC (attached to this post)

2. Open Stream Deck Helper at https://tabletopaudio.com/sd_helper.html

3. Select the saved Custom SoundPad you want to control vi Stream Deck from the list.

4. Open the Desktop Elgato Stream Deck App and drag a Website action (under system) to a button - IMPORTANT: make sure that Open With with is set to GET request in background.

5. Using The Stream Deck Helper page, click the copy button on the sounds/scenes or SoundPads you want to add to the stream deck. Paste this in the URL field. Test it out with just a few to see if you like it. Don't forget to add a 'stop all' button.

6. Go to https://tabletopaudio.com/custom_sp.html#alpha=streamdeck2025 and load the saved SoundPad you chose in the Stream Deck Helper page. (The bit of code at the end of the URL gets you the new Stream Deck button.)

7. On the button bar you'll see a new button "Stream Deck Off". Click to turn this on:

8. If you see a 'Waiting for Stream Deck Companion Connection', Launch the Stream Deck Companion app you downloaded from this post and it it will connect.

9. You should now be able to play sounds, launch scenes and load saved Custom SoundPads from your Stream Deck.

The longer version:

Basically, Stream Deck lets you add 'website' buttons that contain a URL. Using this, combined with a small piece of software I made called "Stream Deck Companion", it creates custom URLs for all 1200 Custom SoundPad sounds. In order to get these URLs you'll use a webpage called Stream Deck Helper, which is just a webpage on tabletopaudio.com that reads your saved Custom SoundPads, and lists the saved sounds and scenes in order to create the links the Stream Deck needs to work.

The proper way to do this is to create an actual plugin using the Stream Deck SDK. I'm not sure I've got the time or skills for that so let's see how this one goes. None of this is particularly slick. But, it's better than downloading the sounds themselves to your Stream Deck. I tried that and the looping is pretty janky and leaves noticeable gaps.

A note about the app you're downloading: Yes, it's unsigned software. Yes, If you're on Windows you'll have to click past 'Windows protected your PC', click more info, then click 'run anyway'.

if you're on a Mac, you'll need to go to system settings/preferences/privacy and security - scroll down and find the blocked app notification and click 'open anyway' then enter your admin password. Are you still there?

Wait, is this safe, Tim?

Yes. It's essentially a tiny web server, wrapped in an electron app (to make it mac and PC executable) that runs ONLY on your computer. There are no external connections, data collection, tracking etc etc. It doesn't even need internet access beyond the initial download. It communicates between the Stream Deck and the local browser, that's it. If you're interested/concerned, here is a link to the project on GitHub, it's completely open source.

I don't know how much more I'm going to work on this. It's more of a proof of concept. If you don't add the #alpha=streamdeck2025 to the URL, the Custom SoundPad page will be exactly as is it was before. If this gains some interest, i'll may remove the need to add the extra #alpha... at the end of the URL if more than a few people start using this.

Thank you all, as always, for your continuing support.

Best,

Tim