Macro Keypad Recommendations?

[Awfki]

Inspired by Stackoverflow's copy paste keyboard I'd like to add an extra keypad that I can tie some AutoHotKey macros to.

Anyone got recommendations or pro tips?

Will pretty much any add-on keypad work? Will an add-on numeric keypad give the same key codes as the main keyboard or will it be easy for AHK to tell the difference?

Other questions of a similar nature.

Thank you!

[boiler]

Any standard external numeric keypad should work with AHK. The new keypad will produce the same key codes as the numeric keypad of your main keyboard, if it has one. You could use something like AHI (AutoHotInterception) by @evilC that lets you distinguish between input devices.

[Lepes]

Do you know dactyl manuform handwired keyboard? I'm typing on that thing right now.

It is a handwired keyboard with an Arduino Pro Micro that is recognized just as a USB keyboard/mouse. It uses a QMK firmware (openSource, the same that StackOverflow copy/paste microkeyboard) that you can do a lot of things with it (each key is programable, you can do keyboard macros on the firmware itself, differents layers with differents keymaps, and so on) and, of course, you can use Autohotkey. If you only want a macro key pad, maybe too much for you.
https://medium.com/swlh/complete-idiot-guide-for-building-a-dactyl-manuform-keyboard-53454845b065

If you use a standard USB numpad keyboard, you are sticked to those predefined keys (numpadAdd, numpadSubract, and so on). If you build your own keyboard pad, you can assign F13 to F24 keycodes to each key, and since those keys doesn't exists in most keyboards, they don't bother you.

To be honest, if you want something simple, I'll suggest from easy to hard:
- usb numpad keyboard controlled by autohotkey. Using CTRL, Shift, Alt and numpad key, I think it is enough.
- Create your own, the simplest way (coding on Arduino IDE): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8X5ySlzgXM
- Create your own, QMK firmware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDlcxLQ1SbY This one is with PCB, but you can do it handwired as well. If you will not press two key at the same time, you can avoid soldering diodes.

I mean "hard mode" because maybe you need to learn a lot, soldering, wiring, how firmware works... it is just time to spend on it. It is not required to be NASA engineer lol!

If you decide to create one yourself, it should be to add a rotary encoder, trackball or something that is not standard.

just my cent