What is esp32macropad?

ESP32 Macro Pad is a small hardware and software project that turns a touchscreen panel into a custom set of physical buttons for your computer. It is built around the Elecrow CrowPanel Advance, a 7 inch touchscreen display, paired with a Windows application that does the real work. The panel itself is simple. It only stores the layout: which buttons exist, their titles, colors, icons, brightness, and screen position. When you press a button, the panel sends a button ID to your computer over WebSocket. It does not know what that button is supposed to do. All the actual logic, such as opening a website, launching a program, or sending a keyboard shortcut, lives in a Windows desktop app built with .NET 10 and Avalonia. That desktop app finds panels automatically on your network using mDNS, or you can connect by IP address directly. For each button you can choose to open an HTTP or HTTPS link, start a program, or send a Windows keyboard shortcut, and any image you pick gets resized to fit the panel's small icon format automatically. Because keyboard shortcuts are sent using a Windows only input method, this project only works on Windows machines, and both the macro pad app and the target program, like OBS, need to be running at matching permission levels for the shortcut to actually register. The firmware side runs on the CrowPanel hardware using PlatformIO. On first setup the panel creates its own WiFi access point so you can connect it to your network, after which it advertises itself for the desktop app to find. The project notes that it currently targets a specific hardware revision for the display's backlight control, so anyone using a different board revision should test carefully before relying on it. This is a hobby project originally written to accompany a tech article about building a homemade stream deck alternative, and the repository has a modest 15 stars so far.