My daughter likes buttons. She's learning letters. I was bored over winter break and had these parts laying around... so I built her a "Button Box" based around an Arduino. Open source, hackable, and ...
This is still very much a work in progress, but this is the Arduino sketch for a 26 button, 4 axis button box that I am building. It probably won't work. HOWEVER, if it does, this might be useful for ...
Check out the demo video on YouTube: The Arduino stage provides Serial communication with the host through USB and handles inputs (buttons, switches, selectors, rotary encoders) and outputs (LEDs).