Wow what a great resource this forum is to get one's creative juices flowing  It's only a matter of time before I can convince my wife to look the other way long enough for me to sink my teeth into a serious simpit project like some I see here.
In the mean time, assuming there are many other dreamers like myself wiping drool from their keyboards, I thought I'd share my simple little device that elevates the emersion factor for my simming without breaking my bank account (of my marriage)
I got the idea from this http://www.rogerdodger.net/diyflightsims.html
It's basically an old keyboard mounted inside.





Of course the next version will have to incorporate some sort LCD for gauges 

Yes it is very functional, and one USB plug so I just move it away to the closet when I'm not using it.
I do have a question about mapping buttons, specifically the altitude hold on the autopilot. Before I made this device I would always preset my altitude before commencing my take-off run, and once in the air and climbing out you can hit 'alt hold' and let the auto-pilot acquire the selected altitude, However when remapping all the buttons for this device the 'altitude hold' button will only hold the altitude that you are currently at, this is fine for smaller AC with simpler auto-pilots, but I would like to be able to use the alt-hold to aquire the selected altitude. Does anyone have any insight into this?