This opens up some intriguing possibilities you could, for example, set one pedal to be a "push-to-talk" hotkey for recording a podcast with minimal background noise when you aren't speaking and simultaneously use Jason Snell x Dan Moren's shortcut for marking edit points while recording - even if you need to mark an edit point while holding the push-to-talk pedal, the Stream Deck software should handle both commands seamlessly. I confirmed that holding down one pedal simply repeats its designated hotkey until you let go again, and interestingly any additional pedal pushes (a virtual clutch?) are sent in parallel while the other pedal is being pressed down with no interruption. For instance, I could see folks using the Stream Deck Pedal in racing games with in-game braking and acceleration hotkeys tied to a specific pedal. I did play around with some specific use cases I could imagine for the Stream Deck pedal to see how well the software would accommodate them. Configuring your Pedal is pretty much the same as configuring a traditional Stream Deck, just with fewer action slots. I've covered the assortment of actions and plugins (plus the real killer feature: profiles) in a previous post, so I won't waste too much time here rehashing that here. Just open the Stream Deck app, connect the hardware, and customize the three available buttons with the same extensive range of actions (and Multiactions) available for the traditional Stream Deck. The actual process of using the Stream Deck Pedal is fairly straightforward, and will look pretty familiar to anyone with a Stream Deck. The Stream Deck Pedal also comes packaged with an assortment of springs with varying strength, which you can swap in to adjust the foot force necessary to depress a given pedal, as well as two stoppers to entirely disable the middle pedal and (in Elgato's own words) ".convert it into a convenient footrest." It would have never occurred to me to make the pedal's depression force adjustable (let alone include the kitting to make that happen), but it's a nice touch nonetheless. Customizing spring weight in a foot pedal reminds me of my mechanical keyboard friends, with ever-so-specific preferences about bottom-out force. One subtle yet essential design element in an otherwise-uncomplicated three-button pedal is the slight elevation of the left and right pedals over the middle button sandwiched between them - about a quarter-inch of tactile feedback that makes tapping the wrong button pretty difficult to do. The rest of the Pedal is made of hardy matte plastic with a pleasant texture on the top surface, so your (hopefully-socked) feet have something grippy to register on. The first thing I noticed when the package arrived was how much larger the box was than I was expecting - the Pedal has a 10"x7" footprint and weighs a surprisingly-chunky two pounds, owing in no small part to the rigid steel sheet forming its bottom plate. Elgato is among vanishingly-few peripheral manufacturers that spring to mind when I think of "build quality" and "reliability" - and the Pedal lives up to their reputation. PC peripherals (especially in the Windows world) are often cheap, flaky hunks of plastic that bug out from time to time and usually don't live up to expectations. The Stream Deck Pedal is an intriguing piece of hardware that follows Elgato's pattern of over-engineering in a market where under-engineering is the usual norm. Evie doesn't appreciate the Pedal encroaching on her usual spot. As an avid user of the traditional Stream Deck for its unique and convenient productivity applications, I pretty much instantly ordered the Stream Deck Pedal if for nothing else but to check out the novel form-factor in the flesh, and discuss a bit why Elgato's continued hardware creativity is so delightfully uncommon. ![]() As the name implies, it's a three-button pedal that functions as a foot-operated Stream Deck (sans the backlit display). Last week, Elgato released an intriguing addition to its line of streaming automation hardware: the Elgato Stream Deck Pedal.
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