Q: can i add a wireless keyboard to keyboard maestro as a macro controller? how do i do this so the keyboard won't actually press that key as a main keyboard? i am running out of combinations on my trusty old butterfly keyboard. pls help.
A: ok, 2 very important things i have to say about this. 1, yes, you can absolutely use additional keyboards with kbm, all with their own separate keys. i'm currently using 9 keyboards. i will explain the trick i discovered for doing that. but the other important thing i must tell you first is that if you start including wireless keyboards in your setup, you will be in agony city. i had 3 wireless keyboards in the setup and it was a disaster. it's occasionally annoying when a bluetooth keyboard disconnects, but if you have 4 bluetooth keyboards it's going to happen 4 times more often. actually more, because bluetooth just gets messed up when you have too many. i returned all the wireless keyboards and went for wired keyboards only. much more reliable. Ok, now that that hint/tip is out of the way, the secret for getting additional keyboards in kbm is first get Karabiner Elements (this is a key-swapping software). But instead of swapping keys, you are actually going to disable every key. (set it to "vk disable".) this may take a while if you go through the popup menus, but if you open the json file you can change it via the text all in one shot (with a little help from kbm of course). Once you have all the keys disabled, go into keyboard maestro and when you make your trigger, instead of "Hot Key" trigger, use "USB device key" trigger, press a button and it will come right up. This works for almost any keyboard you can imagine, even PC keyboards (although you may never get the function key.) Another secret tip that i will tell you is, if extra keyboards don't work when you first try, or if they don't work when you first boot up, just put the computer to sleep then wake it up. quickest way is to go to the lock screen and then unlock (and i've now zapped that with a macro). only have to do it if i restart, otherwise they work forever. it took me a while to figure that out, i thought they mysteriously just didn't work until i went to lunch. email me if you need any more tips, i have learned a lot so far, and it's a strange world, and i've run into a lot of things i didn't expect, but overall it's been much easier than i expected, considering what i've seen Tom Scott and Taran Van Hemert had to go through. and i'm not even sure if peternlewis is even aware that what i'm doing is possible