G15 Emulation for Matrix Orbital?

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MarlboroMan
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G15 Emulation for Matrix Orbital?

Post by MarlboroMan »

I know this is going to sound like some what of a strange question, but has someone written a program or an emulator of some sort that will allow a Matrix Orbital product to respond to the same command as the LCD on the G15?

Let me give you an example and explain what I want to do.

Battlefield 2142 from DICE now has direct support for the G15 LCD with the latest 1.10 patch.

What I would like to do is have this G15 LCD display data come up on a Matrix Orbital product, so that I can use a Microsoft Natrual Keyboard instead of the G15.

With more and more games now offering direct support of the G15 LCD, it should would be cool if you could use a Matrix Orbital device in a drive bay to display the same LCD data that the G15 LCD displays, rather than having to be stuck with the G15 keyboard.

Has anyone looked into this? Does anyone know if it is possible or where I can look for more info?

Raquel
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Post by Raquel »

Sounds neat.
Software developers out there, are there any info / input that you may have?
Raquel Malinis
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Ray
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Post by Ray »

Logitech probably figured people would want to do that and put a chunk of their code into all aplications that use the G15 so you can't just replace some dll with one of your own and redirect output.

The only way this probably could work is probably emulate the full G15 usb device using the Device Simulation Framework available in the latest Windows Driver Kit but this would require quite some low level knowledge of the usb protocol and the G15, doubt anyone would have the time or resoures to pull of something like that, but then again never say never :)

cipher_nemo
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Post by cipher_nemo »

As Ray mentioned, one option is to emulate the G15's USB interface and LCD hardware, then send the output to one of MO's LCDs. Another option would be to hook up an actual G15 and intercept the calls send to it over that specific USB bus and device number. Again, this would take some work and someone motivated to spend the time on it, but not impossible. I'm not sure what sort of demand there would be for such software.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest an alternate solution. If you like using a keyboard other than the G15, why not open up the G15 you have, strip out its guts, and mod an external enclosure for it to just run the LCD from the G15 by itself? Of course it isn't as fancy or powerful as an MO LCD, but it would work without additional software. I've opened up the LCD portion of one of my G15s to tinker with it, and it doesn't look too complicated to fit into your own project box or other small enclosure.

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