Initially, I mounted the ESP-WROOM-32 on a piece of card, with 6 touch pads and a rotary controller as proof of concept and for software development before I found a suitable box. It has Bluetooth built-in and can run directly from a single Lithium polymer cell. It worked well, but I preferred the positive feel of push buttons - while managing a complicated Zoom session you don't want any accidents due to accidentally brushing a touch pad.Īfter a little research it seemed that the readily available and fairly cheap ESP-WROOM-32 microcontroller was best suited to my needs. In fact I used this method for initial development before the box and buttons arrived, with everything simply mounted on a piece of cardboard. The ESP-WROOM-32 supports capacitive touch inputs, and if you prefer, you can make touch pads out of self-adhesive copper foil instead of push buttons. Hot melt glue gun, superglue and 2-part epoxy glue.Needle file, for shaping the appertures needed for the slide switch and microUSB connector.A step cone drill bit is very good for enlarging a pilot hole to the size needed for the push buttons. Soldering iron, solder, wire cutters and strippers, screwdrivers, adjustable spanner etc.If yours is the same you'll need 4 M3.5x20mm. The one I used was 125x80x32mm from AliExpress but you can use any, or make your own. 20 way (or more) rainbow ribbon cable.3.3k 0603 or 0805 surface mount resistor.503035 LiPo battery with 2-pin JST connector.2 3mm LEDs - green and blue (or your preference).Various sellers offer a set of 6 different colours but you can also get an orange one from some sources. Search for "12mm round push button switch" or "PBS-33b" for the ones I used. ESP-WROOM-32 development board.This comes is several configuratioons, but the 30 pin breadboard-friendly version is the easiest to work with.You may want to vary the design, but here are the supplies I used: But all you have to do is redefine the key combinations generated by the different buttons for my controller to operate with OBS - or for that matter, with any other program which accepts hot keys, including Teams, Google Classroom and other teleconferencing solutions. This can be controlled, like Zoom, with special hot-key combinations, in fact professional controllers can be had for a tidy sum. In researching how to make a Bluetooth version it transpired that people have made very similar controllers for OBS (Open Broadcast Studio), which is used for managing multiple video feeds. So if the cable doesn't bother you, you might as well stick to my original design, but wire-free is always nice. This would need a Bluetooth-capable controller instead of a cheap Arduino Pro Micro, rechargeable battery and charging circuit. (No doubt a good few others did too.)Įver since, I've wanted to build a Bluetooth version so as to avoid the dangling cable. Views and likes took off quite spectacularly, and at the time of writing it has clocked up over 43,000 views and 20 people have said they made it. Not long into the pandemic we were heavily into Zoom for church services, and so to facilitate the management of online sessions I built a Zoom control box.
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