there are 2 areas here.

1. Allowing users with no Stalk control to do maps so that selected IR/front panel buttons are mapped to regular Stalk buttons for things like Visual- - these can hopefully passed to the player to action as fake stalk codes.

2. For those of use with a stalk, allow us to define what the buttons are mapped to within the player and possibly define new button sequences and generall make the Stalk do all sorts of things.

I am mainly interested in the latter as I have a stalk and therefore being able to go visual- is something I can do now. However this would be useful when at home when selecting the visual to display as often it quicker to go back than "go around the horn again".

So, for my input to point 2, the Sony Stalk hardware lets you do two main things right now:

1. Press a button, twist the volume knob or the seek ring forward/back - but you can only do one of these 3 things at a time. There is no concept of chording (pushing mutiple buttons at the same time) on the stalk due to its design, except for the volume knob being pushed in along with another button.

2. Press and Hold the volume knob in, (this activates the shift function), then you can twist the now locked together volume knob/seek ring forward or back or press another button.

Note: other than seek+/- which does next/previous visual the other shifted buttons are ignored by the player right now so I guess the player knows they are shifted button codes, its just that theres no function assigned to them so it ignores them.


What I would like Hijack to be able to do is to trap all the unshifted buttons as 'stalk codes' (fake IR codes or symbolic stalk names), these same buttons can all be pressed and Held like regular IR buttons can (so the .L button maps are allowed for).

The only thing here is that what button is volume up/down depends on the stalk setting in Emplode (which is in the config.ini), I don't know if it will be easy to allow users maps to talk about StalkVolUp say as a symbolic button and have hijack work out whether that is really the vol+ button or actually the stalk vol- button due to it being mounted on the left rather than the right. (this would let you and me have the same 'logical' stalk map even if I have mine on the right hand side of my steering wheel and you have yours on the left.

Comments on this Mark?

As well, I would like the Shift function handled as both a 'shift modifier' so that all button codes you press while Shift is held in now report/can be mapped as shifted versions of themselves. (.S modifier)

And I would also like the quick push in and then release (with no other button involved) of the volume knob handled as a special 'modifier' button so that for example:
a push and release of the shift button followed by the push of the Off button is seen as a distinct/different from just a push of the off button, and is also different from shift in (and hold) and then push of the Off button.

This shift button as temporary modifier option lets us get at 8+ more assignable functions from the same stalk control, its probably optional but would be a nice to have - could be useful to assign some useful codes to it as it can be done with one finger without looking (push the knob in then release to activate modifier, then press other button), these buttons would be nearly as useful as regular unshifted buttons

I would expect a time out of say 1-2 seconds for the push and release modifier option (i.e. if you don't touch another button within 1-2 seconds of the pusha dn release the shift button then the modifier state is cancelled). Also once any key is pressed the modifier state is cancelled so its a single button press option.

The push the knob in (shift & hold) then pressing another button is a normal shift function - I believe all buttons can be shifted (except the seek+/seek- vol+/- which reports as shift vol+/vol- becuase they lock together when shifted).

Hope that explains what I want it to do.

With the unshifted/shifted codes we can get something like 16 buttons available, with the shift in and release as an additional modifier we get another 9, that gives us more buttons on the stalk than the regular Ir remote supports, and since the Shift and unshiefted could have long presses as well then thats lots and lots of options from one tiny stalk [gives rise to lots of 'macro' buttons we could have to do whizzy things that currently require many button presses].

Of course thats my full wish list with Stalks, how much Mark can actually implement is another story.