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Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

This made me think of a question I've had for a bit now.

What is the cheapest way to get a grid of buttons that wires into a laptop (mac if it matters) to play sound effects? My wife is a teacher and would really enjoy hitting a button and getting some dumb sound effect to play. But it's just a lark, so it's not worth too much $ invested.

I had assumed a cheap drum pad + midi, but not 100% sure that makes sense.

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Not necessarily the cheapest possible options, but cheap enough and fairly quick to get going:

If you want a MIDI pad controller, the Korg nanoPAD 2 [1] is $65 new (and often pops up used) and powered entirely off USB. You can then set up Sitala [2] to listen for notes from the pad and drag-and-drop samples onto each note.

If you want keyboard-style keys, the Pimoroni Keybow kit [2] is $57 - there is a bit of assembly, but no soldering.

[1] https://www.korg.com/us/products/computergear/nanopad2/

[2] https://decomposer.de/sitala/

[2] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/keybow-2040

I've seen nanopads (1 and 2) go for $20 fairly often; the kind of thing that's so cheap I'm always tempted to get it with minimal actual use cases for it.

Cheapest grid would probably be an external numpad controlling a soundboard

https://github.com/Shadetheartist/Numboard_X

My guess would be to build a DIY Stream Deck (basically a standalone keyboard with macros mapped to the keys), such as the one found here:

https://www.partsnotincluded.com/diy-stream-deck-mini-macro-...

Perhaps a "game" with a different sound for each key on the keyboard? Can be created quite simply with SDL.

Search for "effects pad" on your online marketer of choice. Show a few to your wife in the affordable range (whatever that means to you), get the one she likes. Personally I would make sure the screenshots do not include the price tag, but that's me.

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