Custom meeting controls with Elgato Stream Deck and WebHID
With the holidays just around the corner we thought it would be a cool to show a perhaps non-conventional use of the Elgato StreamDeck, a gadget I recently acquired that would make a great gift!
The Elgato Stream Deck is a programmable hardware device that allows users to automate virtually any task with the press of a button. It has been around for a while but not too long ago I was at the RTC.ON conference chatting with my buddy Dan Jenkins when he told me there was a library to control these devices using WebHID. I instantly bought one (no, this is not a sponsored post).
The idea here is to use the Jitsi iframe API (you can start using it right away with a free JaaS account!) to map custom meeting controls on your own Stream Deck. Our iframe API provides a bunch of events and commands to interact with the meeting and the WebHID library allows us to program each key individually, inluding the icon on each of the buttons, which is actually a tiny display!
Here is a video demonstrating the integration:
Cool, right! The potential for contextual controls for specific applications right from your browser is virtually boundless, what a time to be working on the Web Platform.
The source code can be found here. It works with 6 buttons by default (the Stream Deck Mini) but it’s easy to adapt to other models.
Have fun and happy holidays!
❤️ Your personal meetings team.