How can I remap the keys for a specific keyboard?

Question

There are several keyboards attached to my computer. I'd like to remap the keys on ONE of them, but keep the rest as they were. How can I do this?

As for the "why" – I have this idea that I'd like to have a "multimedia keypad" which is separate from my main keyboard, but I could not find any online. So I think that I could take a typical USB numpad (they cost like 5$), and remap the keys on one of them. Add appropriate stickers, and I'm all seat, cheaply.

I know that it's theoretically possible, but before I get my hands dirty and write my own software, I'd like to see if there's maybe an existing one out there.

Oh, yes, I'm running Windows 7.

Answer 1

I know my response is late, but as long as you use the US keyboard driver (not US international, where two characters e.g. `e turns into è), you can use HIDMacros. You can even control AutoHotKey through HIDMacros to give you even more flexibility.

HIDMacros is free, but not open source. It allows you to re-define keys or even launch macros per keyboard (or USB NumPad).

If you require the "international" feature, you could use AutoHotKey to combine these two keys into accented characters.

2 remarks for HIDMacros:

1. When you run as a limited user (not the Administrator), you need to launch HIDMacros with Administration rights.

2. HIDMacros can be placed on the system tray, but only after you changed the configuration under the configuration tab.

Answer 2

There are also programmable keyboards out there that will let you set the keys to whatever you like on the physical board (i.e., change what signals the keys send). This may not be what you want though as these keyboards are relatively rare and expensive. This might be one of the cheapest. Here are some smaller ones.