Hey there. Is it possible to bind regular keyboard keys to the functions you have bound using Mobiflight? I have a couple of knobs that send keypress signals and it appears as a keyboard.
This is for MSFS 2020.
I don’t think you can assign your keyboard as an input module for Mobiflight, as it was intended to allow users other control panels, knobs etc to be mapped to controls and avoid the use of KB & mouse.
If you want to assign a keyboard key to a function, you just have to map it as usual in the sim - so long as that control is actually available in 2020.
Thanks for the reply.
The functions I wanted to assign are not available in game.
I had to go the tortuous route of intercepting the keyboard keys from the specific device, converting them to MIDI events which act upon a virtual MIDI device, then using Spad.Next to recieve those MIDI events and activate the particular functions in MSFS.
Massive PITA to set up initially, mainly conceptually as its hard to understand why it has to be so convoluted, but it works and its easy enough to add extra functions now. The other benefit is I still get full keyboard usage on the other keyboard device.
For anyone interested I used this tutorial: Tutorial: How to use any secondary PC keyboard to control MSFS events and variables via SPAD.neXt and MIDI commands
I also found this video to be helpful as a quick guide to doing what I wanted in Spad.Next: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JC6qfUrr1tE
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Yes, doing the actual keyboard to MIDI assignments is 100% PITA.
But unfortunately it’s the only way to use a secondary standard and cheap keyboard completely independently from your primary, as Windows by design can not distinguish between one keyboard and another. And there may be cases where you’d love to have a secondary keyboard (e.g. a small wireless Logitech or a Rii Mini or small programmable keyboards of just 5-10 buttons, such are the ones here).
The tutorial may look intimidating at first, but in reality I’ve tried to write it as simple as possible so it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to set up. What will take much more time is to bind keyboard presses to MIDI notes via UCR tool and then assign those MIDI commands to actual MSFS simconnect events/LVARs via SPAD.next.
The latter advertises that it can use direct keyboard keypresses to control events/variables and it’s a useful function, but of little use once those keypresses conflict with other things you may be doing with any of your keyboards (like typing in the EFB). Unless you use some sort of trigger, like set up a local variable which you somehow alternate between true/false and depending on its value you toggle your keyboard input to SPAD. However using MIDI commands instead of direct keyboard presses in SPAD.next circumvents all these limitations.
Once you have set everything up using the above tutorials, then you just forget about it and you can keep using it for years. The alternative is to get specialized flight controllers or devices like Elgato Stream Deck which do NOT work as plain keyboards but obviously they’re much more expensive.
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The tutorial was very good. The fact my old addled brain managed to follow it and get it working first time is proof of that.
Yes, binding each key / knob increment or decrement was the slow part and made me question why it had to be so convoluted. Really it does make sense though and is easier to understand ‘the why’ now I’ve done it.
Aside requiring a few extra tools and some setup its great really, and the end result is better than what I originally wanted.
I use something called a SideKey, which has 15 keys and two knobs that are also buttons. For around £20 or so it does the job nicely, and now I know I can add more if I feel the need and still retain full use of my keyboard.
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