Visual indication of Layer on Atreus

Programming Plugins
1

Hi all,

I am trying to define a (supposedly) simple plugin for my Atreus that will send a signal to my computer based on what Layer I am currently on (example of this working in QMK here: Add QMK visual layer indicator using Hammerspoon | david balatero ) unfortunately, the documentation for Kaleidoscope is too sparse for me to find out how to use the layer.isactive method in a plugin so I was hoping you all could help me out/ point me in the correct direction for implementing this functionality.

2

The trick here is using the onLayerChange() event in the plugin, and send, well, whatever you want via Focus. Something along these lines:

class LayerIndicator_: public kaleidoscope::Plugin {
 public:
   kaleidoscope::EventHandlerResult onLayerChange() {
     Focus.send("layer-activated", Layer.mostRecent(), "\n");
     return kaleidoscope::EventHandlerResult::OK;
   };
};

This will send the string layer-activated 1\n to the host when layer 1 is activated, and so on and so forth. If you want to send the layer name, you can check the most recent layer with Layer.mostRecent(), and do something like:

Focus.send("layer-activated:");
switch (Layer.mostRecent()) {
  case 0:
    Focus.send("QWERTY");
    break;
  case 1:
    Focus.send("FUN");
    break;
  default:
    Focus.send(Layer.mostRecent());
    break;
}
Focus.send("\n");

Do keep in mind that doing this will interfere with Chrysalis, as they use the same communication channel, so don’t switch layers while Chrysalis is open and connected to your Atreus.

3

oh awesome, thanks for the assistance! out of curiosity, if i wanted to send a key stroke (for example f_13, an unused key in MacOS) would Focus.send(key_F13) accomplish that?

4

No, Focus can only send text over USB serial. If you want to send a sequence of key events, the easiest I think is using macros: Macros.send(MACRO(T(F13)));. If you want to send a key whose name does not begin with Key_, you can use Tr(Key_F13) instead of T(F13) (T is the same as Tr, but adds the Key_ prefix). T means Tap, by the way: it presses the key, sends a report, then releases it, and sends another report, thus, simulating a real key tap.

The Macros docs have more info about all the different macro steps you can use.

5

Thanks for the assistance! I got it to work following your advice. Set up two macros for switching between layers that both changed the layer and sent an unused key to alert the hammerspoon script i have running to change an alert in my system menu bar!

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