While they were mentioned on Slashdot over two years ago, these “virtual keyboards” seemed to always be just a little bit further on the horizon, and to be incorporated into cell phones and PDAs, not as a stand-alone gadget amenable to hacking.
But it looks like one company, VKB has in production a stand-alone version with a serial port output. And at least one company in the US, “PC-notetaker” is selling them. For $199.
That’s just a bit expensive for casually buying one to hack apart and maybe turn into an interesting music performance gizmo. Maybe I’ll try one out anyway. I wonder how many simultaneous keypresses it can handle?
(oh wait, it looks like expansys has some for $160.95)