All sorts of stream decks are available on the market today, but where's the fun buying something you could create from scratch? At least, that seems to be the spirit of the Raspberry Pi maker community, as shown in projects like this one, which was created by maker and developer Last-Shake-9874. Using our favorite SBC, he's made a Raspberry Pi stream deck from scratch.
If you're unfamiliar with stream decks, these devices connect to PCs and provide buttons that let you do things like open applications or trigger specific macros. In this case, Last-Shake-9874 has programmed his Raspberry Pi stream deck to check PC stats and open software like Chrome or Thonny.
According to Last-Shake-9874, the project isn't finished, and new features and functions will be added to the operating system. Currently, the hardware consists mainly of the Pi and a screen. In the future, Last-Shake-9874 intends to improve things by designing a case to house the components.
As we mentioned, the main board powering this project is a Raspberry Pi 4, but Last-Shake-9874 expressed interest in running the stream deck on a Pi Zero or even a Pico. The Pi is connected to a 7-inch touchscreen used for both video output and user input.
Last-Shake-9874 briefly discussed the software used in the project, clarifying that the code runs on Boot2qt. The desktop also runs an application that interfaces with the Pi and interprets the input commands. In the demo video, we see Last-Shake-9874 select the calculator app from the touchscreen, which then launches on the desktop.
If you want to look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, you can check out the project thread shared on Reddit by Last-Shake-9874.
