sudo raspi-config => localiation options => change keyboard layout => generic 104 => english us => english us => the default for => no compose => no then sudo reboot

Installing packages needed

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/langolierz/r_e_c_u_r.git
(omx-python-wrapper)
sudo apt-get install gedit (optional for editing)

Key Mapping

key remappings were achieved using the program xmodmap, and the most helpful post we found for that was this stackexchange you can find the current keymappings using xmodmap -pke and for the specifically numpad related keymappings use:

xmodmap -pke | grep KP > defaultKeymap
xmodmap -pke | grep Nu >> defaultKeymap

which prints only the default numpad keys to a file for reference later. keys can be manually remapped using `xmodmap -e "keycode 82=a" for testing.

In order to have the custom keymap work on startup we have added the line xmodmap ~/r_e_c_u_r/dotfiles/.remap to the launcher script.

where the file .remap has a list of the keycodes that you want to include.

Start r_e_c_u_r on login/boot

We wanted to set things up to autostart after xdg got going, there are a number of ways of tackling this, mentioned here.

we ended up using method 2 from that page, which is user specific (ie. if you make more users on your pi you have to repeat this process) and involves editing the autostart config file:

sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

and adding the following line to the bottom of the file:

@bash /home/pi/r_e_c_u_r/dotfiles/launchscript.sh

setting up driver for cheap 3.5" lcd screen

first expand your file system : sudo raspi-config => more options => expand filesysem. boot option => Desktop autologin.
the download and unzip (tar xvf LCD-show-*.tar.gz) the waveshare driver into your home/pi dir
now run scripts in ~/r_e_c_u_r/dotfiles to switch between LCD display and hdmi output

hiding boot text

i followed some instructions in top answer here - this is a work in progress