Anyone have one of these?

[Mike]

Does anyone have one of these keyboards yet? http://www.ideazon.com/products/products_default.html They look pretty cool. It would be really cool if they came up with interchangable arcade controls for the thing. They also might make a good device to hack. They are only $30 for the base unit. And they contain a 24X10 matrix. Also supposedly it stores macros on a chip on the keyboard so they might be usable my mame. I just wanted to get feedback on it before I ordered one.

[eightbit]

Hmmm, programable keyboards have been around for ever. I'm not seeing the benefit in this thing.

[Zeitgeist]

Mike,

Are you intending to hack this thing?

If you are just looking to remap/reprogram keys on a keyboard hack then you might get some use from ZD Net's free Tradekeys2 utility available at this website:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,19645,00.asp

You will have to copy the address above & paste it in your address bar for it to work.

If you use a hacked keyboard matrix (pcb), you can use this application to make your mame specific controls compatable with any emulator or game.

It actually allows you to save different keymap profiles.
You can have a different profile for MAME, Stella, Impact, etc...
You would simply run the profile before playing the game(s).
 
Hope this helps...
 

[eightbit]

Mike,

Are you intending to hack this thing?

If you are just looking to remap/reprogram keys on a keyboard hack then you might get some use from ZD Net's free Tradekeys2 utility available at this website:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,19645,00.asp

You will have to copy the address above & paste it in your address bar for it to work.

If you use a hacked keyboard matrix (pcb), you can use this application to make your mame specific controls compatable with any emulator or game.

It actually allows you to save different keymap profiles.
You can have a different profile for MAME, Stella, Impact, etc...
You would simply run the profile before playing the game(s).
 
Hope this helps...
 

Interesting... Has anyone tried doing this with a keyboard encoder?

[Jakobud]

I was at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose last week and this company had a boot there, displaying the ZBoard.  I stopped and check it out and talked to a rep about it.  I don't think it would be easy to hack.  See there is this one base unit you buy, and then there are the multiple keyboard overlays you buy.  Each overlay contains some sort of information that tells the base unit which overlay you are using.  And each overlay costs $30 on top of the $30 base.  The only thing that would be cool about trying to hack this is if you could somehow construct your own keyboard overlays. And I doubt you could.  You would see what I mean when you see the overlays up close.  It was an interesting product though.

[Jakobud]

Hmm that TradeKeys 2 program is interesting.  If only it was commandline based it would work PERFECT for arcade cabinets.  But the source IS included in the download...maybe someone here can MAKE it a commandline based software...hint hint