Question 1

Why are these thing so expensive? like i can buy another keyboard for 20$ or less, and this only has 24 buttons compared to the average keyboard.

Accepted Answer

I know this is a very old question, but it's a good one that deserves an answer.   The reason is that this is not a keyboard.  Regular keyboards are very basic HID (human interface devices) that have very simple layouts and standardized, off-the-shelf USB chips that modern operating systems recognize easily.  If you hook up 2 keyboards to a machine, most OSes will treat them as carbon copies of one another, and you can't set them up independently -- like one as an American QWERTY layout and the other as DVORAK or Russian, Mandarin, etc.  If you change one, the OS will assume the other is changed also.  This is where the difference comes in.   This keypad is programmable where any key can be anything, and it's not recognized as a keyboard, but a different kind of input device.  It needs specialized chips for that and talks to the OSes differently than a keyboard would.   It's produced in bulk, but nowhere near the manufacturing numbers of keyboards, so it costs more per unit from that alone because each unit must bear more of the cost of the production, but also it has more expensive components as well as customized programming.   Anyone can buy a USB keyboard chip, set up an injection molding line and lay traces to make a variation of a keyboard if they expect to sell a few million of them (or more likely a few hundred million of them), and price them low.   The OS will recognize the chip and use standard OS drivers for it.   These aren't anywhere near as high volume as keyboards and they include much more sophisticated chips and programming, so you have to pay more per unit to cover all the expenses plus a bit of profit for the manufacturer.

Question 2

What color are the key switches?  Carefully pull a key off and look at the button that the key would normally rest on.

Accepted Answer

The button is the (+) under the key and is black. PS: These come with a key puller and 3 double keys.

Question 3

Since you are only allowed two shift/toggle keys, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get 46 keys out of this. The manual doesn't help.

Accepted Answer

Each key has 2 levels of programming (Level 1 and Level 2).Once you assign 1 key to be a toggle or shift lever, you can access the second level programing.

Question 4

how many keystrokes can you have per key?  is there acharacter limit?

Accepted Answer

I don't know the differences between the CP24 and the 683.  I have the 863, but Amazon sent this question to me anyway.  The CP24 certainly looks like the 683.  The software that loads the macros onto the 683 allows 111 keystrokes per macro.  I suspect that the software would not allow more keystrokes than the hardware could handle.  By the way, I am very impressed with quality of my 683.

ASIN	B00O1ASXKO
Best Sellers Rank	#895 in Computer Input Devices #2,512 in Computer Keyboards
Customer Reviews	4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (101)
Date First Available	September 29, 2014
Item Weight	15.2 ounces
Item model number	CP24-USBHID
Manufacturer	Genovation
Product Dimensions	7.25 x 5.25 x 3 inches

ControlPad CP24 USB HID

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