I am an engineer. Engineers are lazy people.

Recently I have been having a shitload of meetings at work. Say goodbye to good old times when you could not leave your comfort zone for days - not talk to other people.

I’ve been using keyboard shortcuts to mute the microphone. Not long ago (~7 months) I moved to a split keyboard DIY lily58 and I’m loving it, but there’s a catch. It has only 58 keys, so to mute myself I need to push the Raise button together with M, in other words, I need to use both hands to mute myself. I could change it to another key on the first layout, but changing the keymap layout requires recompilation of software and flashing the keyboard itself, it’s tedious. Also, I would have to re-learn this shortcut. God damn.

Around 5 years ago I was using a Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard which had a volume knob. You could map the Mute function to F12 which was near it, so both volume control and mute were close. You could use a single hand to control it. It was awesome.

Taking the above thoughts into consideration, my plan is to create a device that would mitigate these problems. Key aspects that I would love to have:

• ability to change the volume and mute the microphone
• volume mute indicator
• microphone mute indicator
• small footprint on a desk
• long battery life - at least 2 weeks
• built-in battery rechargeable via USB-C
• wireless

I have some ideas in my mind but I need to sleep with them. Stay tuned for over-engineering.