I'm new to this group, and haven't had time yet to read all the past
posts, so if this question has already been answered please just point
me to the relevant posts. Thanks :)

I'm sure everyone has seen the cars with navigational displays, GPS,
etc... One thing I've noticed with people building car pc's is that
they all have to hunt around like crazy for a small, back-lit keyboard
(paying almost as much for the keyboard as for the pc), that doesn't
take up a lot of space.

Has anyone thought of building a version of the chordite as a shift
knob? Maybe have a small marble inset on the side, being read by an
off-the-shelf optical mouse. It would have to be setup so that you
could work the shift without entering in keypresses. Maybe a slide
switch?

I haven't even had time to go over the complete PDF yet, but are there
any plans to utilize the PIC microcontroller as an option to the
Atmel? I have absolutely no knowledge of the Atmel series.

Thanks.

Russell