Fathom
A sunken camera, on your keys.
A camera was lowered onto a reef and left there. Fathom is what it sees. It does not pan, it does not follow anything, and nothing in it is aimed at you — fish cross the frame because they were going somewhere, and sometimes the frame is empty.
Submitted and waiting on Elgato's review. Write to us if you want a note when it lands.
One view, across every key
Drop a Window key on as many keys as you like, anywhere on the deck. They measure themselves into one block and each becomes a window onto the same water, so the bezels behave like the mullions of a real window rather than chopping the scene into tiles.
A fish crossing a gutter goes behind it and comes out the other side. That is the whole reason to do this across a block instead of on one key — though one key is fine too, if that is the space you have.
Three bodies of water
Not a brightness setting. Each is a different depth with its own light, its own colour and its own animals — and the further down you go, the less of anything survives except shape.
In the abyss the only colour left is the light things make themselves: an anglerfish's lure, the bell of a jelly. Which is exactly what it is like down there.
And whatever swims past
Twelve species, each carrying itself the way it actually does. A shark cruises where a sardine flicks; a ray beats its wings; a moray is one travelling wave from nose to tail; an octopus rides the sand rather than hanging above it.
Plus sardine shoals, jellyfish and squid — and, in the deep, the anglerfish. Three planes of distance: far animals are smaller, slower, bluer and blurred into the haze, near ones pass across the lens out of focus, and marine snow drifts down through all of it.
A reef that is yours
The seabed is grown from a number rather than drawn — sand banks, coral heads and the bare stretches between them, with sea fans, brain coral, tube sponges, staghorn, anemones and kelp. It is generated once and then left alone, so it is the same place tomorrow, and the expensive half of the picture costs nothing per frame.
If you do not like yours, grow another. Every seed is a different reef.
One press, and the colour comes back
The only thing a press does. A camera on the bottom would have a lamp, so this one does too: six seconds of light, and the reef remembers what colour it is. Then it goes out again.
Sometimes nothing happens
Turn the traffic down and the frame is often bare. That is deliberate, and it is what the sea is actually like: a tank where something is always happening reads as a screensaver, and a screensaver is not worth a key. It is also what makes a shark going past in the haze worth looking up for.
Nothing to operate
It keeps no score, sets no goals, has no notifications and asks for nothing. There is no game in here and nothing to come back to. It is a camera someone left on the bottom.
Requirements
- Stream Deck app
- 7.1 or newer
- Devices
- Any Stream Deck with keys
- Platforms
- macOS 12+ and Windows 10+
- Keys needed
- One works; two by three is a good size; the whole deck is better
- Internet
- Never — it does not have a network
What it doesn't do
No account, no sign-in, no network requests, no analytics. Every frame is generated on your own machine, which is also why it works on a train.
Version
v1.0.0
First release. One continuous view across any block of keys, a seabed grown from a seed and then left alone, twelve species carrying themselves the way they do, three depths from sunlit reef to lightless abyss, three planes of distance with marine snow falling through them, and a camera lamp on a press.
Support
Something wrong, or an animal you wish were in it? Write to us and a human will answer.
- Your Stream Deck app version and operating system
- How many keys the view covers, and at what depth
- The seed shown in the plugin's settings
- The plugin log from the de.7bp.fathom.sdPlugin folder