TL;DR: tried 6 keyboards, some QMK powered and one standard USB 2.0 Dell keyboard, none of their arrow keys or numpad arrows are recognized by Patterning 2, all of their arrows are recognized in Safari and all other apps except Patterning 2. Looking for a fix if possible.
Hi! I’ve recently picked up Patterning 2 on my iPad mini 6 and have been enjoying the workflow immensely.
After reading the manual a couple times I decided to build a keyboard controller for Patterning 2 out of a spare pcb from a split keyboard. I had enough spare parts to throw something together and it works great except for the pattern switching commands on arrow keys, which do nothing. I thought there might be an issue with the particular board, my soldering work, or the firmware, but I’ve individually tested all of these elements and everything is fine.
My key controller is powered by QMK, as are most of my keyboards, and this led me to experiment with a few and I found that no QMK keyboard’s arrow keys will be recognized by Patterning 2, though they are recognized in all other places on the iPad, such as entering text. These keys are sending standard key codes. I then tried using the numpad 4 and 6 keycodes and that only triggered samples as I expected.
For completeness, I just tried out an old Dell USB keyboard from the early 2000s that I keep around since it basically always works on everything. No dice. All transport controls and pads etc are recognized but NOT the arrow keys.
I could keep testing keyboards but I’ve found that none regardless of firmware or manufacturer seem to send arrow key codes accepted by Patterning 2. Is it potentially a new bug introduced more recently than the update that added keyboard support? Aside from that, I can’t imagine what would be causing this issue, unless iPad keyboard folios handle arrow keys differently than all other keyboards. Since that was what was used in the example video.
I haven’t been able to find any documentation of this bug, so I wanted to mention it here. I know Patterning 3 is the current focus of development but I’d love to know if anyone has at least found a workaround for this in Patterning 2 as having dedicated buttons for pattern switching would be fantastic for live use. Or if a quick patch could fix it, that would be rad too (I know it’s usually not that simple though) Thanks!