Yeah, that works if you've planned your project out and junk like that :) I'm usually just slapping junk together at the last minute and cannibalising whatever I have laying around (and for some reason, I have a lot of keyboards laying around).

If you were writing the consuming app, you could get analog support with an ADC into a decoder into individual or combinations of keys. I say you'd have to be writing the app because I don't know many existing apps that support that sort of key binding (though I do seem to recall MS Flight Simulator doing it, at least for throttle).

Yea, how I fail the "True Maker test". I tend to plan stuff out, dig through a pretty well stocked set of parts. Then China markets for parts for projects that I can wait on, Digikey for a project I want to build tomorrow.

I do refactor parts (I've done the keyboard thing mentioned above) but now since I'm older I realize I don't have the time to dork around with a dodgy keyboard (ummm is that the reason I tossed it into the junk bin?) and want things to work after I fix my design errors, not after I fix a broken part.

I'm more a pragmatic Maker. Can I run to Home Despot and buy wood, fasters, plan, cut, assemble and install shelves? Yes. Can I go to Ikea, buy something close and make it fit that then looks really nice? Yes. With 400 linear feet of shelving in the robot lab, sometimes Ikea wins.

Likewise, some nifty Adafruit board is the quicker way to win.