I’ve been messing around with Touch Panel, and I just can’t seem to get it right. (I think my iPad may be going TU) Anyway, now I am looking at StreamDeck. Other than the obvious price difference, is the StreamDeck easier to program than Touch Panel? The model I am considering is the Elgato with the 15 buttons. That’s about the top of my budget right now. (Christmas hit hard!) Your advice and suggestions will be appreciated. I hope all of you have a Happy New Year!
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Just a suggestion, have a look at the Behringer X-touch mini. I have this and it does most of the functions for the 737 (with Spad.Next).
It will give you effectively 8 knobs, 24 buttons over two levels so you can double that. With Spad, you can also add short and long presses, so that could actually double the button applications again! I find it fantastic and it’s not expensive. Here’s how I set mine up for the 737. But I have different templates/set-ups for each a/c I fly.
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I have a Stream Deck Plus that has has four rotary encoders with buttons. Eight buttons and a display with touch gestures(tap, hold, swipe left & right)
I LOVE the extra knobs and you can create multiple pages and navigate them with physical buttons, gestures, or even input from other controllers or sim events, using SPAD.neXt.
That looks really good! Do the templates come with the unit, or do you make them yourself and customize them? Thanks for the quick reply!
I make them all myself and print out on stiff paper, then cover with book covering, before making all the holes. (there’s a neat little tool called a compass cutter OLFA CMP-1 to cut the circles).
For me, I like the combination of Touch Screens and Air Manager (with Knobsters). This allows for a wide variety of aircraft cockpits to be setup.
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The downside to using generic hardware is remembering what knob, button or switch does what for each aircraft. Having a template for each aircraft to overlay is a great way to alleviate that. If you have a touch screen of course that part is already taken care of with whatever custom graphic you care to use. I’m a touch screen advocate but I certainly get the appeal of physical hardware too. I like @skypilotYTS use a knobster for this to complement Air Manager controls on touch screens.
If you can save up for it, have a look at the Loupedeck Live. There’s some posts on here and YouTube videos about using it for flight simming, and sounds like it is more versatile than a Stream Deck. It’s regularly about $270 on Amazon, which I think is over your current budget. I’m kinda in the same boat and just going to wait until i can afford the Loupedeck instead of getting something cheaper now that I’ll only be wanting to replace anyway.
Streamdecks here and love them all. I would feel quite lost without them.
1 x 32button XL
1 x Streamdeck Plus
2 x 15 button.
You really can make those 15 button units earn their keep too. I have used Axis and Ohs to interface rather than Spad and even with those 15 button units you can group different functions on different pages, making a tight and cohesive experience.
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Owner of SD XL and 15-button and Xtouch here for quite some time now. I find that the combination of Stream Deck and Xtouch is ideal, as there are certain things that work best using a physical knob rather than a button (LCD or not).
The 15-button SD was fantastic at its original price (around 100 EUR or less), but now it’s almost 140-150 where I live so there’s little point in getting it when the XL version is at 200 EUR. The functional difference between them is huge, in the sense that the XL gives you so many more options with the 8x4 button layout, while with the 5x3 version you’ll often struggle to arrange your mappings properly. If possible, prioritize buying the 32 version before the 15 button one and use the latter as auxiliary.
Xtouch’s are really a must as they’re super cheap for what they offer but there are 3 caveats:
- They can’t be used out of the box, they require 3rd party software to integrate with MSFS. I think there are free options out there, but personally I prefer Spad.next which works awesomely with the Xtouch.
- If you have more than 1 Xtouch (like I do), they don’t have unique hardware IDs so Windows (and the 3rd party app by extension) cannot distinguish between them if you swap them to different USB ports. Best to connect them at a port, map their functions and leave them at the same port.
- You have to print layout labels for each aircraft mapping and these are relatively cumbersome to cut. I tried it once while also laminating the sheet and it took ages to cut through the 24 holes. I gave up from doing it again, now I simply have a separate printout of the various knob/button functions (which I don’t bother to stick on the Xtouch) or I just remember it off the top of my head after dozens of hours of using each layout.
ps: for some daring souls there’s also the option to use a separate keyboard as a MIDI controlling device for MSFS which can work independently of your main keyboard. It’s ideal for using MCDUs (both for A-Z keyboard but also for side LSKs using small programmable keyboards such as this one).
This is how it’s done.
I also use an xtouch mini and a stream deck. Regarding the templates, what is book covering? Is there another name for it?
Book Covering
Sticky backed plastic it used to be called.
I suppose that if you had a software template, that some high street printing shop could run something out for you as a vinyl sticky backed, ready to go package. As long that is, as it is in a common format.
There is this outfit that will print them out for you Overlays for Behringer X-Touch Mini - Taktility
Which IMHO is ridiculously overpriced. But then they’re probably the only ones doing it.
I’ve always known it as book covering. It’s usually a role of plastic film or lamination that you can easily cut. It often goes on books to protect the covers, hence the name. Probably available in stationery shops…
yeah, but the trouble is, I often change functions for any number of reasons, so that would be expensive each time…
Looks like book covering is like clear contact paper. Ill try it. Thank you.
Hi - this looks great and the price is incredibly reasonable. However, I am not using Spad.next currently. I checked it out a while back and it looked like it was going to take a big investment of time to get proficient with it. How much work did it take you to set this up?