"See those two screws at the bottom of the picture? If you connect those screws to a switch of some kind, and plug the whole thing into the USB port of a computer, the switch will act as a one-key keyboard. This one happens to be an Enter key." - ⓞnor

$33 for a 1 key keyboard? (minus the actual key) - Paul Buchheit

It sure is pretty though - Jesse Stay

surely this could be done more inexpensively with an atmel or pic with usb - joshua schachter

Or the guts from an old mouse. - Ken Sheppardson

This is an elaborate AFD joke by Jacques, right? (Edit: by "joke", I mean I wouldn't be surprised if the description is accurate, but kind of underpromises what it can do.) - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

Wow, he got shinydevices.com? That's a pretty good domain! Also, this device is way, way prettier than I expected. I'm really impressed by how pretty it is. - niniane

It is kind of pretty. Who is making these? - Paul Buchheit

Paul: When I first read "$33 for a 1 key keyboard? (minus the actual key)", I thought you were talking about an actual Apple product. - Gabe

^^^^ like :) - piikummitus

@Gabe :D - Jemm

Having a real "any" key is probably totally worth it. - MiniMage

Dan was kind enough to manufacture the plastic casing pictured. It is indeed prettier than I had expected! - Jacques Frechet

I've been thinking about hacking up a cheap USB keyboard (a la http://www.instructables.com/id... ) for a project. This device looks like it'd be easier, prettier, and possibly smaller, but $33 does seem a bit steep considering the fact that USB keyboards can be found for less than $10, and it sounds like I'd need several of these if I want to control multiple keys. - Laurence Gonsalves

What's the project, OOC? - ⓞnor

I was just thinking to make pedals for modifier keys, particularly shift and maybe also control, possibly starting with piano-style pedals like these: http://www.sweetwater.com/store... - Laurence Gonsalves

How 'bout starting with some USB dictation transcription pedals? - Ken Sheppardson

I hadn't heard of those before. Thanks. From my searches, it looks like they're for "rewind", "play/pause" and "fast-forward". I'm guessing there are special keycodes for those? I could probably remap them to the keys I want with software, but it'd be nice if they could be more "plug-and-play" (so I could move the device between machines without having to set up mappings). Do you know if any of these transcription pedals are configurable through hardware (eg: dip switches)? - Laurence Gonsalves

BTW: I've actually seen a few companies that made exactly what I'm looking for, but they all seem to be discontinued. This page has a bunch of links: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea... - Laurence Gonsalves

Laurence: I'm afraid all I know about them is that they exist. Sorry. - Ken Sheppardson

Laurence: have you seen this? http://www.piengineering.com/custom... - Gabe

...or to cut out a whole lot of work: http://www.piengineering.com/xkeys... - Ken Sheppardson

Those products from piengineering look good. A bit pricey ($119.95 for what is effectively a 3-key keyboard) but they seem to be programmable, and I guess economies of scale work against them. - Laurence Gonsalves

If you keep increasing the pricetag you'll reach the Optimus 3 Mini, the 3-key keyboard with separate LCD screens for each key. $179.95. - Amit Patel

Amit, I think the Optimus 3 uses OLED screens, not LCD. Presumably that's why they're so expensive. - Gabe

The impressive part about those devices seems to be the reprogramming of the device ROM via USB directly from this web page http://shinydevices.com/setting... (check the source) - Thomas Amberg