USB Footswitch

I bought a USB footswitch recently. Most of the time, I am on my laptop and my plan is to make use of the unused limbs (my feet) while working for hopefully better productivity & efficiency.

If nothing, I’ll atleast have some fun playing around with it. Already using it for gaming right now.

vim-clutch is a well known hardware pedal that helps working with vim by switching between Insert Mode and Normal Mode on pedal press and release.

I have got a triple pedal setup. I went with the more the merrier philosophy.

pedal

I have already configured my 2 pedals to activate Insert Mode (i) & Normal Mode (<ESC>) respectively. This is unlike vim-clutch that could keep Insert Mode active as long as the pedal is pressed and return to Normal Mode as soon as it is released.

pedal

From left to right, it's configured as i for Insert Mode, ESC for Normal Mode & x to trigger ultimate ability in Valorant

In vim-clutch, the person has combined two pedals into one to achieve this as the USB pedal manufacturer (mine & vim-clutch hardware manufacturer is the same) have only made the Pedal Down event as programmable but not the Pedal Up event.

This means that on pressing the pedal, I can map a key(say, i for Insert Mode) but I cannot map a key when the pedal is released (say, <ESC> for Normal Mode). Again, with vim-clutch, they have solved in a really ingenious way by combining two pedals to one.

It has been just a week for me working with these. I think I’ll have to get used to this as it is still not quite natural to make use of foot switches for anything right now. I’ll post more on this once I have hacked around it more and build any workflow with these switches.

Huge thanks to rgerganov, to create the command line utility to configure these footswitches.