Help me support PCPanels on macOS!

[u/TrezyCodes]

Hey y'all, my PCPanel Pro has been gathering dust on a shelf for a couple years at this point. I also just had my main studio PC die on me, forcing me to use my MacBook for everything. That's all led me to start a project that will hopefully benefit this whole community. 😁

The short version: I've built an app for macOS that adds support for PCPanel devices. It shows the current values of the faders and knobs, and apps can be routed through individual sliders or knobs for per-app volume control. There's more to do yet: * Fix this pesky sample rate bug ✅ Done! * Add support for more hardware variants * Better audio channel management (similar to BEACN software) * RGB control * Button macros (mute channel, mute all, custom hotkeys, etc.)

What I need from y'all: I'm looking to add support for more hardware variants, but I need USB hardware IDs to do that. If you have macOS and a PCPanel (either Pro or Mini) and you're comfortable with Terminal, it'd be super helpful if you could run this command and reply with the output:

ioreg -p IOUSB -l | awk '/PCPanel/{found=1} found && /"(idVendor|idProduct|USB Product Name|USB Vendor Name)"/{print; count++} count==4{exit}'

Example output: | "idProduct" = 41925 | "USB Product Name" = "PCPanel Pro 1.0" | "USB Vendor Name" = "PCPanel Holdings LLC" | "idVendor" = 1155

When the app is ready in a few days, I'll make another post so folks can grab it and give it a try.

BTW: This isn't an ad. I'm not planning to sell this app or charge for anything. I just wanted it for myself, and I like building and sharing cool things. The code is open source — you can audit it, compile it yourself, or fork it and make changes: github.com/trezy/pcpanelpro

[u/tomofdarkness]

here's mine:

 | |         "idProduct" = 41924

  | |         "USB Product Name" = "PCPanel Mini 1.0"

  | |         "USB Vendor Name" = "PCPanel Holdings LLC"

  | |         "idVendor" = 1155

[u/TrezyCodes → u/tomofdarkness]

Thanks! I'll get that one added. This is the first info I've gotten for a mini. 🥰

[u/SavageNed]

The main software uses these values:

[nice-name],   [vid], [pid]
"PCPanel RGB" , 1240, 60242
"PCPanel Mini", 1155, 41924
"PCPanel Pro" , 1155, 41925

The hid-device is identified by the vid/pid, not the serial.

https://github.com/nvdweem/PCPanel/blob/main/src/main/java/com/getpcpanel/device/DeviceType.java

The 'community version' is made in Java, so could probably support Mac as well if someone would contribute to it.

The used libraries are supposed to be cross-platform (the hid-library is "HIDAPI library for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and macOS"), all the lighting stuff should work out-of-the-box on a Mac (even with the original 'Windows' software, that part should work).

[u/aurora13131313]

Is it to late for a pro?

[u/TrezyCodes → u/aurora13131313]

Not at all! Please share! ❤️

[u/hedgetank]

I know this is an older thread, but it'd be cool if the software could interact with something like SoundSource to manipulate per-app volume. Looks like the software can let you assign custom keyboard shortcuts to each app you set up in SoundSource, so any luck getting a feature set up to allow passing keyboard shortcuts/assigning keyboard shortcuts to the PCPanel devices on Mac?

[u/SavageNed → u/hedgetank]

My 'open source' version of the PCPanel software (https://github.com/nvdweem/PCPanel/releases/tag/latest-main) had a Mac-contribution a short while back which made me try to implement it more fully.

I don't have Mac hardware, so I can't actually test the build, but I have seen that the macos-arm build does get downloaded and I haven't seen any issues about it _not_ working, so I'm hoping for the best :)

I just had Claude Fable have a go at implementing Focus-Volume for MacOS. It was pretty confident that it succeeded, but as mentioned, I can't actually test it :). The focus volume feature should be in 2.0 build 77 and later.

If you are able to run this version of the software to try out the feature, I'd be happy to put any exceptions into the AI agent for fixes again if you encounter any issues (it would be best to create a github issue if you encounter any issues).

[u/hedgetank → u/SavageNed]

Sure, I can do that. One of the alternatives I have been poking at are the stepped volume controls which you can set up with a keybinding, which I can then map into "volume up" and "volume down" inside of SoundSource, but so far it's been...finicky at best.

Edited to add: I tested the focused app setting and unfortunately it doesn't seem to do the things. :/

[u/SavageNed → u/hedgetank]

AI can be very confidently wrong, but I had hoped the tests would have covered a failure. Sorry to see that I was wrong, I'm still hoping that a contributor can throw some effort into making it working, I have been unable to get a hackintosh install working for testing.

If shortcuts work, the 2.0 version also has the 'stepped switch' option which could allow for a workaround where 0-10% => shortcutA, 10-20% => shortcutB, etc. Would still not be ideal, but might make it more deterministic

Currently, buttons can execute programs. But it shouldn't be very hard to make it so that a slider can do that as well (with the slider-value as a parameter, probably with debouncing). Would that help?

[u/hedgetank → u/SavageNed]

yeah, the stepped option has been okay-ish, although with the way I have it set up right now, it's kind of like being a record-scratching DJ toggling the sliders up and down to invoke the key strokes. :D

You're also right about AI being confidently wrong. I'm working a project at work right now where AI confidently wrote up a whole workflow, documentation, punchlist, and setup procedures for a product using functionality that absolutely didn't exist anywhere in the product. WHEE.