.. that sounds like advice-from-experience!

Marius has a good point there. I would add to it that you should also make sure that you don't leave a window foregrounded that will make a "status beep" or any other unwanted sound when the particular keys that you've chosen are pressed. At our recent SIGGRAPH installation we had a few minutes where we heard the apple "bonk" noise every time someone would press one of the buttons, and realized that the system control panel was the foregrounded application, so it was receiving the button-presses also.

modifier keys work well for this (control, shift, etc) - but if you need 12-16 buttons, you'll probably want to just use letters.
-D

On 8/28/07, marius schebella <marius.schebella@gmail.com> wrote:
just a small hint to prevent problems I experienced in the past. when
you hack a keyboard for installations, I recommend not to use keys which
interrupt the start process (c, s, return or the system runtime). if
people have buttons in installation they will not stop pressing them
during a restart of the machine...
marius.

David Merrill wrote:
> Hi Stuart -
> A hacked USB keyboard makes a nice button-bank, and you can typically
> strip away most of its size, leaving just a little circuit board with
> wires coming out to your buttons. You can read the button-presses with
> Hans's [hid] object.
>
> here's one that we did some time ago...
> http://www.instructables.com/id/EDH81H8H62EQZJIDV8/
> -David M.
>
> On 8/28/07, *Stuart Jones* < s.jones@csm.arts.ac.uk
> <mailto:s.jones@csm.arts.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Hi
>
>     I'm helping with an installation which will have 12-16 buttons
>     (on/off) to
>     set off events in Pd and need to find a simple midi controller to
>     just send
>     note on and note off messages on 12-16 notes to do that. I could
>     hack a midi
>     keyboard but that would be a complicated and bulky solution given
>     the size
>     of the installation. Any suggestions?
>
>     Thanks
>
>     Stuart
>
>
>
>
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