I always thought it made a lot more sense to pair an existing touch device with a computer instead of embedding touch in the keyboard. It’s less limited (e.g. larger horizontal or vertical or grid layouts as needed) and it uses something that most people already have.
I have had that as a low-intensive side project for the last three years. It's amazing how responsive a virtual touchpad you can create using touch events + HTML 5 + websockets!
Thank you :-) I have been silently reading linked articles and comments here for a couple of years; apparently I needed a reason to push my own semi dormant project as well as an actual computer to finally register.
Isn't the advantage of embedding it in the keyboard that it's ideally positioned just a short finger reach away from the default touch typing stance? Also embedding it in the keyboard means it doesn't require any extra desk space, so it's available in bed, on the couch, etc.
Sometimes you are close to the keyboard and sometimes you're walking around giving a presentation or other activities. There is space for both approaches.
Sounds cool. I'm probably not going to install it without an idea of what it's capable of. Maybe a better README with some examples and screenshots would be helpful.
You go to http://your.pc.ip:3000 with your phone's browser. You get some keys on the screen. You touch the keys and it plays some other keys on the pc. What worked for me were volume up, down and mute, Alt-Tab. There were other less interesting combinations like CTRL-numbers but the shortcuts can be configured in a json file. It eventually core dumped and I had to close every terminal before being able to type again (Ubuntu 16.04).
Not too much info, but I can see the first commit was yesterday. Looks like it opens a web server on your PC, which you then open in the browser on your phone. The buttons there make requests that triggers stuff through robotjs.
Cool idea, but doesn't look secured at the moment. And impossible for me to use on my work network, a pairing with the computer would work (bluetooth or USB), but probably not be as easy to implement.
I know is not yet secured , but this was a prototype, because i had the idea yesterday when i woked up. I will be working on securing the whole with maybe a password or something.
I tried Unified Remote and obviously it is much better having been under developement for so much more time.
Unfortunately it keeps disconnecting from my phone, both WiFi and Bluetooth. The app is very bad at signaling if you're connected or not and at managing the connection parameters, and that doesn't help. They could copy JuiceSSH, which is not supereasy but better, or Syncthing.
Still, it doesn't work so I uninstalled it. Power-touch seems potentially better because it does so little that there is no danger of misconfigurations. It's much more hackable too.
So, my phone has no memory to install any app ( because it was cheap and i never seen any potential in upgrading it ), so when i started thinking about this app , i was thinking how can i make it work without installing something on my phone ? then it clicked because i am a web developer.
It's still a cool prototype, and there's still cool stuff you could add. For instance, if I were to use my phone as an extra keyboard for shortcuts, etc., I'd probably have it tethered via USB. USB device identification should be handled in software, so it stands to reason that your phone can pretend to be a USB HID device (similar to what is done in this[0] paper). Having a simple scripting layer would be interesting too. Trackpad wouldn't be bad either.
Another thing that could be cool is having your phone pretend to be a USB webcam.
Why would anyone upvote this? the README is worthless, the repo was started yesterday and it has absolutely no authentication before allowing control of your computer via a publicly available webpage.
I believe it becomes available once you have 500 karma. There may also be an account age requirement. The idea, IIRC, is to only give the power to people who are invested in the community.
> has absolutely no authentication before allowing control of your computer via a publicly available webpage.
It's less than 100 lines of code, not hard to see exactly what it is doing. It doesn't dial out to a remote server, it starts a local server. And unless you're running a computer that is exposed to the public web, that won't be "publicly available."
I'm not saying it's secure, but let's not immediately jump to conclusions. It is what it is a little useful utility, albeit small and immature.
I did no such thing. Everything I pointed out is the truth. The README is incomplete (being diplomatic) and lots of people have port forwarding turned on for various reasons making boxes publicly available.
I question the dev's priorities and judgement if authentication wasn't the first thing on the list before putting it out there.
>It is what it is
you're correct, it's a poorly thought out application that allows for remote control of people's computers.
> I question the dev's priorities and judgement if authentication wasn't the first thing on the list before putting it out there.
Come on, this is the kind of thing I meant. You question his priorities and judgement? Seriously? Because he shared a little project he put together? He made a thing. He shared it. That's it. It's not like he is selling this, or promoting it as some great thing. I imagine he thought other people on HN would find it interesting given all the discussion of Apple's touch bar, so he shared it. No need to be so antagonistically critical of what is obviously not a finished product. A little kindness and consideration goes a long way.
Thank you. I want to add that, my priorities are to make this project available for everybody, my intent is to make it functional, on the prototype I didn't see the need of security because, my own network is private so testing it was a breeze, but now i did implement an authentication because many people requested it. My main goal of building something that's like apple's touch bar , is kinda finished but that doesn't mean i won't evolve the project , all i need is just some ideas and I will happly implement them because I love programming
Still much work to do but it's an interesting idea and a good demo for one day of work.
It core dumped after a few minutes and I had to close every terminal instance before being able to type again but it's OK for what it is.
When it won't crash and kill the keyboard I could use it as a clicker for PDF presentations on my Ubuntu laptop. There is already a wonderful remote for LibreOffice Impress (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.libreoffic...) but I didn't have anything for the other presentation formats.
But we'll need at least some kind of authentication over an encrypted channel.
I really don't know, but my point was actually to build something that's like TouchBar from Apple, but i didn't wanted to pay the premium price of a mac book pro .
47 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttps://github.com/moses-palmer/virtual-touchpad
Requires >= Python 3.5 though so I won't be trying it out just yet.
Oh, and welcome to Hacker News!
Cool idea, but doesn't look secured at the moment. And impossible for me to use on my work network, a pairing with the computer would work (bluetooth or USB), but probably not be as easy to implement.
Unfortunately it keeps disconnecting from my phone, both WiFi and Bluetooth. The app is very bad at signaling if you're connected or not and at managing the connection parameters, and that doesn't help. They could copy JuiceSSH, which is not supereasy but better, or Syncthing.
Still, it doesn't work so I uninstalled it. Power-touch seems potentially better because it does so little that there is no danger of misconfigurations. It's much more hackable too.
Another thing that could be cool is having your phone pretend to be a USB webcam.
[0]http://cs.gmu.edu/~astavrou/research/acsac10.pdf
Common' HN, smh.
2. You need to go to the permalink / direct link to the comment to see the flag link.
It's less than 100 lines of code, not hard to see exactly what it is doing. It doesn't dial out to a remote server, it starts a local server. And unless you're running a computer that is exposed to the public web, that won't be "publicly available."
I'm not saying it's secure, but let's not immediately jump to conclusions. It is what it is a little useful utility, albeit small and immature.
I did no such thing. Everything I pointed out is the truth. The README is incomplete (being diplomatic) and lots of people have port forwarding turned on for various reasons making boxes publicly available.
I question the dev's priorities and judgement if authentication wasn't the first thing on the list before putting it out there.
>It is what it is
you're correct, it's a poorly thought out application that allows for remote control of people's computers.
Come on, this is the kind of thing I meant. You question his priorities and judgement? Seriously? Because he shared a little project he put together? He made a thing. He shared it. That's it. It's not like he is selling this, or promoting it as some great thing. I imagine he thought other people on HN would find it interesting given all the discussion of Apple's touch bar, so he shared it. No need to be so antagonistically critical of what is obviously not a finished product. A little kindness and consideration goes a long way.
It core dumped after a few minutes and I had to close every terminal instance before being able to type again but it's OK for what it is.
When it won't crash and kill the keyboard I could use it as a clicker for PDF presentations on my Ubuntu laptop. There is already a wonderful remote for LibreOffice Impress (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.libreoffic...) but I didn't have anything for the other presentation formats.
But we'll need at least some kind of authentication over an encrypted channel.