How to Make A Simple DIY Loupedeck or StreamDeck Alternative
As creatives are tasked with greater and greater volumes of work, accessories to help speed up their workflow become more and more valuable. While editing consoles can be incredibly useful, they can also be incredibly expensive, which is why YouTuber “Pedro” of DSLR DIY CNC has shared how you can build your own custom “InfiniteDeck” for just about $50.
Control decks for Photoshop and Lightroom like the Loupedeck, Monogram, and Tourbox have grown massive in popularity, but they are anything but cheap, especially as they get more customizable and advanced.
Since photography and videography on their own are expensive hobbies and professions to tackle, Pedro felt compelled as an engineer to make a solution (or alternative) to some of the existing commercial products. In his eleven-minute video, he details the entire process of how to build your own custom editing console that he affectionately calls the “InfiniteDeck.”
“I am an electronic engineer that likes multiple hobbies,” says Pedro. “because of that I become a DIY maker outside of my regular work. Listening to the creative community, I wanted to share the things I do with the hope of helping others do more while saving a little money. I want to make new solutions or alternatives to commercial products, with the same features, or if it is possible, to release a project with greater features than the commercial versions.”
Pedro continues, “I am just starting to work on projects and I hope to release more frequently and try to find the easiest solutions for viewers. For example, while you can find a lot of macro pads to buy or tutorials to make them, most of them are quite complex and require far greater skills from building to programming. I found the Makerfabs development board as a simple solution instead of having to solder a lot of wires. The code I wrote was also made to work with Ducky Script, that way someone does not need to learn coding to create the macro actions and they will not need to reprogram the board every time they change the actions of the buttons.”
Pedro says the entire process doesn’t require any complex wiring, soldering, or complicated programming to create. The main processor of the device uses a simple microSD card allowing users to create new and updated profiles to increase the possibilities the other manufactured solutions do not have.
According to the video, the device doesn’t require complex drivers to use as it emulates a simple keyboard when connected to a computer. Users can store any keyboard combination of application “shortcuts” on the microSD card leveraging just a text editor like Notepad and freeware or online editor to create the icons to be displayed on the device, making it incredibly budget-friendly and useful for editors, streamers, videographers, photographers, digital artists, and designers.
Detailed installation instructions and related links can be found on the DSLR DIY CNC video description. After purchasing the MakerFabs touchscreen, the console can be created and customized very quickly and easily to help speed up the workflow of any creative.
To see more from Pedro, you can visit his YouTube channel and Instagram.
