I was just wondering what will happen if you plug in 2 or more keyboards (usb) into one PC... how will the PC determine which one is the "real" one and how do you map controls for the other keyboards?

I'm thinking of building a cockpit and then maybe just hacking a few keyboards to make panels. Thanks!

From time to time, I have run two keyboards and two mouses while building a system. System simply seems to use whatever keyboard or mouse I'm on without conflict. I don't remember trying to press keys on two keyboards simultaneously -- e.g. "Shift" on one keyboard and "S" on the other. I used either one or the other.

I've tried USB Keyboard, Mouse along side of wireless keyboard, mouse also. I imagine multiple wireless keyboards would work -- particularly if they are the same make and model -- need only one receiver for all of them (I am GUESSING).

I would guess the "mapping" in a game is inside the game-file and which of many keyboards would not matter. That is purely a GUESS.

i think windows will map them together, as I've had up to 4 mice connected at one point and they seemed to all be linked.

I had Wired Mouse, Wireless Mouse, Mouse on my ATI Remote Wonder II and Mouse on my Saitek X52.

When i had my Apt. and my roommate was on my PC, i used to take the ATI Remote and make the mouse move all over the screen while they were trying to play farmville and stuff.

2 Keyboards will work the same way in Win7, not so much so in windows XP though.

I've run 2 keyboards and up to 3 mice at a time. I would use a regular kb sometimes, with a compact no-numpad kb for when I have my wheel set up to have to the side. Had an issue every now and then that one would work and not the other, but I think that was just low battery related or something like that, not Win 7 having issues. All are wireless.

Hi Ice,

It should run as many keyboards and mice as you want to connect. There's a name for the incoming data streams, it escapes me right now, but the Windows drivers put all the key data into one and all the mouse data into another and treats it all as the "system keyboard" or "system mouse". Anybody that's using programmable controller software has at least two, the one they type on and the virtual device the controller software uses, but in theory Windows should accept any keyboard or mouse that gets declared properly and tosses its data into the same buckets. There's probably some limit, maybe 128 or 255, but it's undoubtedly much higher than you'd probably ever have any use for.

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

My apologies, either I've not explained myself correctly or I'm just misunderstanding your replies.

My idea was to connect 2 or 3 keyboards to the PC to have "better access" to the controls. For instance, I want to press "A" on KB1 and send command "A" to the game, then if I press "A" on KB2, it'll send command "Shift+A," and so on. Therefore, instead of having to work with the number of keys on a regular keyboard then having to add modifier to it, I am looking to map modified controls on a second (or third) keyboard.

Pretty sure you'd need a programmable keyboard for that. Even if you remapped the keys by other means, I would think it would apply to any keyboard. Might be some software somewhere to do what you want though. Just my 2˘.
It's a good idea though, I hate the combo controls. If you figure it out, please post what you do.

Hi Ice,

You could do it with a program like AutoHotKey, freebie that sends keys combos, mouse moves, or joystick buttons via the keyboard. The biggest problem you've got with that is that there are a limited number of keys. Keyboards don't send "characters", they send a code that tells what key is pressed, just a key ID. There is no difference between what the "A" key sends for lower and upper case, for example. The OS makes the determination based on the state of the shift key, which has its own code. It normally keeps track of the state of the Shift, Control, and Alt keys, as well as the state of Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock. The "Windows" keys are treated as modifiers too, more like Shifts.

Then there's the problem of what the sim is expecting, whether it needs to see the modifier down before the key and/or after the key it's modifying or it will accept them if they change state simultaneously. Also, when multiple keys are pressed simultaneously that use different modifiers ("shift a" and "control z" for example) the sim can't really know which modifier applies to which key. It sees shift, control, "a", and "z" all at once. Does the "shift" or the "control" go with the "a" or the "z", or maybe they're both assigned to "a", and "z" is just a character that should repeat.

AutoHotKey would allow you to send DX buttons directly, but it doesn't really help. You're still stuck with fact that there are only 105 or so codes to be used to map to buttons and the mapping with programs like AHK isn't applied until it gets past the OS, that doesn't happen until it's past DX. They would still work, but you couldn't really get any more key or button outputs than the number of keycodes that are available on one keyboard.

I don't know if that would do you any good, really. Three 105-key boards that can only send the same 105 codes aren't going to expand your control capabilities much. Unless they've started making multi-byte keyboards that send wide characters (two bytes, I've never seen one) to give you extra codes, it can't really expand the key possibilities. Only give you multiple keyboards to send them from.

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com