Hi everyone,
Wife bought a new keyboard for her laptop so she granted me to use her old one.

Having a mini cockpit (pics to come) I wanted to somehow use it to make a CDU for the A10 or some other switchboard.

Is there any simple way? Soldering is not an issue...

Soooo... Nothing I guess.
:P

No easy way, but several complex ones. Using an AVR chip with the USB HID libraries the possibilities are endless.

*Takes notes*
I love a good challenge.

Thanks.

Thanks!

Don't know if that was what you were looking for, but there you go.

Not really but the more I know the better!

This is one possible avenue:
http://codeandlife.com/2012/06/18/usb-hid-keyboard-with-v-usb/
(but then you'd turn that keyboard matrix in, well a keyboard).
Another possible path is this: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3899105/1/MMJoy_-_Build_your_own_USB_con
The biggest imitation is that the buttons on a PC keyboard are wires in a kind of grid arrangement, but miss the diodes that allow more than N keys to be read at the same time. and since they are membrane contacts it's almost impossible to rewire them in an useful layout.

I had the same problem wondering what to do with a keyboard, I ended up dropping the whole keyboard into the left hand side of the pit so I could just move the one on my desktop out of the way and use the centre-mount Warthog.

My original plan was to have a CDU, but in the end I kept the keyboard mentioned above and removed the innards from my old G15 keyboard, this allows me to call up any airfield layout with co-ordinates and radio frequencies using an applet and I also utilised the orange LEDs to create an orange hue on the left/right side so the keys can be seen without being too bright. The keyboard in the pit means that I also decided to scrap going for an A10 pit but have created a hybrid which can be used for pretty much any platform/helo.