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myxi edited this page Mar 7, 2024 · 22 revisions

Installation

Linux

Crucial Steps

Getting File Permissions Right

This app depends on keyboard scancodes. By default you need to be root to access the scancodes as they are on driver level on Linux. What you can do is having read access to the files that offer the scancodes; for this you need to see the file permissions of /dev/input stuff:

ls -la /dev/input
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     400 Oct 29 14:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root    3920 Oct 29 14:47 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      80 Oct 29 14:47 by-id
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     200 Oct 29 14:47 by-path
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 64 Oct 29 14:47 event0
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 65 Oct 29 14:47 event1
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 74 Oct 29 14:47 event10
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 75 Oct 29 14:47 event11
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 76 Oct 29 14:47 event12
...

So, as you can see the files are owned by root and the group is input. You simply have to add your user to the input group:

# usermod -a -G input eeriemyxi

Here eeriemyxi is the username.

Note

This will give write access to /dev/input stuff. If you are not okay with this, consider adding a new user with a distinct password just to run the project. You would add this user to the input group, but not your primary user.

Identifying Your Device

Now that you have access to the input events of all devices, the next logical thing to do is to know which out of the events is the one you're looking for. For that, you'll have to see the names of the USB devices and their IDs:

# evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0:	Power Button
/dev/input/event1:	Lid Switch
/dev/input/event10:	BY Tech Gaming Keyboard Mouse
/dev/input/event11:	Wireless hotkeys
/dev/input/event12:	PC Speaker
...
/dev/input/event6:	BY Tech Gaming Keyboard
/dev/input/event7:	BY Tech Gaming Keyboard System Control
/dev/input/event8:	BY Tech Gaming Keyboard Consumer Control
/dev/input/event9:	BY Tech Gaming Keyboard
Select the device event number [0-18]:
Note

If evtest program is unavailable, please see how to it install it for your Linux distribution. (Search something like "evtest for <distro name>")

Once you have identified your keyboard, you should enter the ID in the prompt and try typing something on your keyboard then see the logs to confirm the event is working (otherwise try another one). In my case, I had to check both 6 and 9.

Manual Installation

Same as Windows' Manual Installation guide. Follow the steps given for manual installation on Windows once you have access to /dev/input.

Windows

Manual Installation

Dependencies

Steps

First Method
git clone --depth 1 --branch main <REPO URL> mechvibes-lite
pip install ./mechvibes-lite
Second Method
pip install git+<REPO URL>@main

Done! Now you should be able to use the app (try mvibes run).

Others

Other operating systems are not supported. I would have added support for Darwin, but I cannot afford the environment to test it out on. I will gladly accept contributions though.

Usage

[...]

Configuration

Configuration Files

Paths

Linux

It will look for your configuration files in

  • /etc/mechvibes-lite/
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mechvibes-lite/
  • /home/$USER/.config/mechvibes-lite/
  • Where the package was installed.

In the same order as the list.

Windows

It will look for your configuration files in %APPDATA%/mechvibes-lite/ and if it fails to find them there, it will default to the directory where the package was installed.

themes

This is a folder that the application expects that you'd have if you decide have your configuration file in another location than the default one.

As for what this folder is for, it is expected that you will keep your keyboard themes there.

configuration.yml

This is the configuration file.

  • core section contains information that is crucial to the app.
    • core.input_event_code is to specify the the input event id of your device. Only applicable for Linux users. See Identifying Your Device for more information.
  • active_theme section contains information for the currently active theme.
    • active_theme.id is used to specify the name of the theme. It checks your configuration folder's themes folder for the theme.
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