It's nice that there is so much innovation in keyboards the last year 2-3 years, in an area that seems to have been stagnant in the 2-3 decades before that. We have the Ergodox (and the EZ in a few weeks), the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard and Keyboardio in 2016 (well, that's the crowdfunded planning - make of that what you will), there are (in the non-split area) many different high-quality 10-key less and mini variations, keycap customization is turning into a micromarket of itself, etc.
Innovation in details sure, but switches with fancy feels and keycaps aren't revolutionary. I'd really like a Datahand[1] -esque keyboard for under a grand, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
The Ergodox design has one very significant advance over standard keyboards (besides the NKRO), the large cluster of buttons accessible to each thumb. The glaring omission is the the lack of any kind of mouse-pointer control. It's an odd decision to spend maybe $240 US https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ergodox-ez-an-incredible-... on a keyboard that will still leave you moving your hand on and off your mouse all day. Come to think of it, for that kind of money it would be nice to get Velotype http://www.velotype.com/en/ / Veyboard http://www.veyboard.nl/ -style wrist keys as well.
I really like the features he/she thought of. If it were wireless, it would make the 8GB storage a lot more useful. I am not one for flashing lights in anything that I do, but I won't doubt this is very cool. The other features are great. I can't other manufacturers aren't thinking of this stuff!
Ever since I got to know and love the emacs macro feature (record a
sequence of commands, and replay it at a keypress), I've wanted to
have this same superpower at the hardware level. I'm making a keypad
out of arcade buttons [1], an old box, and a teensy [2]. I excpect
I'll have to write the record/playback code by myself (it's not too
bad, there's an arduino / c-like language), but has anyone heard of
such a thing?
edit - Great! Looks like this keyboard has a macro ability built into it, only it's called "keylogger". Now to find the source code...
Hi! Project author here. The keyboard has both the macro functions (from F1 to F12) and the keylogger. Since it's completely open source / open hardware you can disable the keylogger in the firmware if you don't like it. I personally don't use it. No one uses the keyboard except me and I'm not going to log my own stuff :) . Just put it there to show that it is possible to do it. Regarding the source code, it's available in my github: https://github.com/masaleiro/HacKeyboard
14 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] thread[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand
https://github.com/dodohand/dodohand?files=1
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0
http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html
I really like the features he/she thought of. If it were wireless, it would make the 8GB storage a lot more useful. I am not one for flashing lights in anything that I do, but I won't doubt this is very cool. The other features are great. I can't other manufacturers aren't thinking of this stuff!
edit - Great! Looks like this keyboard has a macro ability built into it, only it's called "keylogger". Now to find the source code...
[1] - http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/20pcs-lot-35mm-Arcad...
[2] - https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/firmware