I'm looking for a simple solution to add a second pc keyboard to my setup. The only thing i want to do is read-out keyboard strokes and transmit them (netsend?) to my main machine. These are my current ideas :

• second-hand cheap laptop, but that's too large for my purposes
• some really small form factor pc which could run pd?

Are there other (smaller/cheaper) solutions around or any recommendations to be made about possible mini pc's?

Thanks a lot,

Domien

the pcs tht have the mini-itx mobos are comparable in price to a laptop, and though not really smaller, the shapes are different so might accommodate your space requirements. Thin client pcs are another option, like hp's t5000 series. If you really need tiny, there's gumstix.com.

Never tried it before so I might be talking bollocks, but maybe you can attach a second KB via usb and read this device separate from your main one. Under linux you would assign a tty as another terminal.... worth googling , it might save you spending on another board.

obi is correct, if all you need is to have two typing keyboards, just plug in some usb keyboards. They should just plug and play in windows.

Also, I think you could throw the caps lock on one keyboard to make 'a' and 'A' look different in PD eg a= 97 and A= 65

Okay, you must MUST try synergy. It is a friggin' dream. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Synergy allows cross platform sharing of a single mouse/board across the network with mutiple client computers. It is super easy to set up and I've used it on win, osx and linux. Do it, everybody do it.

great tip, cheers!

Thanx again all of you wise people

Especially the tip from jon is so simple but elegant. But then that would only give me an extra set of character keys. I'll post more to this topic once i've advanced.

Yes the caps lock would only give you extra letter keys.

If you hacked the second keyboard so that every key was a Shift+<key>, or that the shift key was always down, that would give you a completely new keyboard(caps and symbols etc).

One thing I noticed, is that if you start the [key] help patch holding down the shift key, [key] get repeated messages. However, once you hit any other key while holding shift, that stops and you are good to go. Note that when you hold down shift for 8 seconds on windows, you get a pop-up about filterkeys. Just go into the settings for filter keys and turn off the shortcut to activate filterkeys.

also, take a look at http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-Roll-Up-Keyboard/

some DIY fun

Ok, i finally took a first initiative on this one but without succes. What i did was indeed buy a second usb keyboard and attached that to my laptop. However, apparently (under winxp that is) all keyboard control is dealt with by the os. So if i press the shift key on one keyboard the second one also generates capitals. The same goes for shiftlock, capslock,...

I've been looking at the gumstix machines, but i'm not sure if it has a keyboard connection, or wether its linux version would support pd.

The search goes on.