Hey Arduino Community. I am very new here.
I am wondering what Arduino board would be good for making a Keyboard or Laptop Keyboard with 18 or more Programmable Macro Keys (like the old Logitech G15 Y-UG75 keyboards of olde, which I have one and it has ZERO issues). I am looking at building my own Pi 4 Laptop with a display and a full keyboard.
Leonardo or Pro Micro or Leostick.
You will have - in addition to the rest of the design - to figure out how you want to actually program the macros.
I suppose you have a special "start Macro" key which you press, then the macro key to be programmed, then the macro sequence, then the "start Macro" key again to finish it. And an indicator to show macro programming in progress (and macro being executed).
Alternatively, the "radio key" trick - a very long press on the macro key itself starts macro recording until it is pressed again. Still the indicator.
If you are going to use the Arduino Keyboard library then you need to use an Arduino board that supports it such as a Leonardo or Pro Micro.
You will need to differentiate between 18 different inputs to the Arduino in order to output the corresponding macro keystrokes and there are a number of ways to do this.
Do you envisage the macro keystrokes being part of the program, able to be entered by the user or perhaps readable from an SD card ?
thanks. So the macro key situation. I am not quite sure what you mean by macro recording, unless that means assigning a function. Here is a Logitech Y-UG75
There is some misunderstanding here.
I have no idea how you program the macro keys on that keyboard, I was more concerned about how you program them if you used say a Leonardo hence asking
Do you envisage the macro keystrokes being part of the program, able to be entered by the user or perhaps readable from an SD card ?
Same here.
OK, so that is a keyboard. What on earth does that have to do with an Arduino? 
UKHeliBob:
If you are going to use the Arduino Keyboard library then you need to use an Arduino board that supports it such as a Leonardo or Pro Micro.You will need to differentiate between 18 different inputs to the Arduino in order to output the corresponding macro keystrokes and there are a number of ways to do this.
Do you envisage the macro keystrokes being part of the program, able to be entered by the user or perhaps readable from an SD card ?
I'm looking to do the same thing.
I'm envisioning the macro keystrokes being part of the Arduino program, able to be entered by the user on a USB keyboard seperate from the Arduino macro device. (All without the use of a software to edit these macros).
Is this possible with just an Arduino pro micro or would it require other components to be able to pull the keystrokes from the keyboard that are to be used in the macros?
