If you stream online, chances are, you have an Elgato Stream Deck, a physical control surface of programmable buttons that helps to automate common functions. Today, Elgato has launched a new product, the Stream Deck Pedal which allows you to launch similar functions with the tap of your foot.
Having a hardware device that you interact with using your foot, enables you to have two hands-free. This obviously is a huge advantage if you are playing games and need to keep one hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse, you’re not able to press a button to switch camera, show an overlay, or similar but with this, you could tap your foot and have that work seamlessly.
The Stream Deck Pedal has three pedals allow for some pretty creative use cases. Elgato gives examples like Discord where you can Toggle Mute, Push-to-talk etc. Perhaps maybe even more interesting are suggested uses in video editing, where there are a number of common workflows that require a lot of keyboard shortcuts, and introducing foot controls has the potential to speed up those workflows.
The pedals could also be used in conjunction with a presentation. Imagine you’re presenting while standing and using your hands to gesture, or demonstrate something, you can then seamlessly move through your slides using your feet.
The possibilities afforded by this fairly simple hardware device, are quite interesting and I’m sure we’ll see the streaming community flock to this with use cases we can’t imagine.
The Stream Deck Pedal features a grippy surface and anti-skid feet to ensure the device stays in place, and connects to your system using a 5m USB-C port.
The device costs US$89.99 and unfortunately is not yet available in Australia, hopefully, that changes soon.
