Footswitch command howto

I purchased a USB footswitch device. It shows up under lsusb as ID 3553:b001. Although my Ubuntu doesn't recognize the device, it does respond as a keyboard.

I installed a program called footswitch, which allows me to assign strings to each pedal. I would like each foot pedal to run a script (eg, /usr/bin/tvonoff). Right now, if I am at a terminal and press the center switch, it responds by typing the string /usr/bin/tvonoff followed by the carriage return into the terminal, which activates the script. However, I want the script to run regardless of whether I'm in the terminal or not.