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  • The hub works because the computer still recognizes the (individual) keyboards as seperate devices (which is why you can plug in both keyboards and mice, and have them both work) - I'd imagine that the USB protocol handles this (although I don't know how). For your request... how would you handle something like turning CapsLock/ScrollLock/NumLock on/off? Keep in mind that NumLock can be set pre-OS from the BIOS menu, and is reported (and displayed) from the keyboard. You'd likely need a special keyboard for this, not a hub.
    – Clockwork-Muse
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 20:08
  • For my purposes I won't be dealing with any special keys. I need to send only a small subset of the keys on the keybard. And they will all be normal letters.
    – FoamyGuy
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 20:13
  • 3
    Why do you want a broadcasting keyboard? Typing the same thing on multiple devices at one time isn't usually a useful thing to do - what's your actual application? Perhaps with that info, we can come up with a more appropriate solution.
    – Michael Kohne
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 20:54
  • 1
    I don't think this exists off the shelf, unless you are willing to use a software solution. It would be fairly practical to build by connecting a number of usb-slave-enabled micro-controllers (one per PC) to a usb-host-enabled one (for the keyboard) using their serial ports; if you want to look into building that, then it would be appropriate to ask such a question back on electronics.stackexchange.
    – Chris Stratton
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 23:44
  • 3
    @Tim: are the devices networked? Because you could install a VNC server in each one (there are VNC servers for Android too) and then a single PC with all the client windows. Then you could use e.g. AutoHotKey to multiplex a single keypress to all the VNC windows. It's hacky, but it should work.
    – André Paramés
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 0:33