Button and twist knob to send keystroke to PC
As a novice, I would like to create a small breadboard with 5 items on it. 3 toggle buttons, and two constant spin (ie. no stop at 360 degrees) knobs.

Those knobs are called &quot;Rotary Encoders&quot;.

Is then like the bottoms to send what ever key stroke (single key pee click) to the pc as if it was from a keyboard (maybe even a shift+key?)

Then you really want an Arduino with a &quot;native&quot; USB connection, like the Leonardo or Micro.

Can anyone guide me in the right direction? Would I need 3rd party software to convert signals to keystrokes on the pc?

Not with a Micro or Leonardo - you just use the Keyboard.h library.  If you want to use your Nano then yes, you can only talk serial, and you will have to have some third party software that interprets serial commands and injects keyboard signals into your OS.  I think there's some Python projects around that do that kind of thing. Or there is &quot;professional&quot; software, like 232key that can do it for you.