The club I am a part of at my school is currently trying to host a variety/dating show in which contestants will have the capability of controlling a button. There should be about 12 buttons to make in total, and these buttons serve to input a keystroke to a nearby computer (preferably wirelessly) to produce certain results in the show.
Specifically, there will be 12 contestants sitting on one side of a rectangular table, with a button in front of each contestant. Initially, there will be an "on" state for all of the buttons (maybe indicated by a physical light/lamp connected to the button or graphically on the computer).
Some ideas I had for this could be to take the IC chip of a cheap wireless keyboard, and soldering a Staples button's leads on to the wireless keyboard IC in such a way that it would send a certain keystroke when the button is pressed. Then I would have 12 bluetooth receivers connected to a USB hub, receiving the keystrokes. I have seen the wireless buttons that people have made, and are selling online, but they are expensive and require extra software, which also costs a lot of money. Is there any simpler solution to this? Will my idea be viable?
I got my idea from this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2JCNLgubU0, but 12 of those keyboards sounds quite expensive, not to mention that they are discontinued and a newer model may not work for this idea. Is it possible to just buy the IC chip somewhere, or something that could produce the results I want?
I was thinking that in the video, the guy's idea is to use 5 keyboard IC chips to modify 5 separate buttons, but would it be possible to have one keyboard IC, and the buttons each soldered to different leads for certain keystrokes, that way eliminating the need for 12 IC chips in my case?..
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask a question like this, but I am not sure where else to ask.