There was a product very similar to this in the late 1980s. My uncle invested in the company. But it flopped. I am sorry I cannot remember the name. I do remember skilled typists could use it at least as fast as 2 hand traditional typing.
Having had a twiddler since they came out, seeing this topic the first ting I did was search the thread to see who mentioned it first :) Not sure of the timeline, probably a little after that the Playstation Glove looked like a great idea but the reality sucked.
Decades on now but still trying to find wearable computing stuff that can drag modern computing back to the early 90s (spending years trying to recreate the original Private Eye [0] display). Checking that out on wikipedia right now just fired a harmony of so many nostalgia neurons:-
>The Student Electronic Notebook consisted of the Private Eye, Toshiba diskless AIX notebook computers (prototypes), a stylus based input system and a virtual keyboard. It used direct-sequence spread spectrum radio links to provide all the usual TCP/IP based services, including NFS mounted file systems and X11, which all ran in the Andrew Project environment.
Dude, this is so cool! I've had something like this floating around my cluttered headspace for ages, and it always sort of floats to the surface during the rare times when I do some light sysadmin work via Termux on my phone.
Another thing that jumps to mind is the minichord[1], a nominally open-source synth/instrument.
I just love seeing these little devices people can come up with given the proliferation of the necessary devboards and tools. Nice project.
I'm very confused now about it's use. Is it a keyboard for typing letters/numbers or a keyboard for making music? The fact TFA talks about chords and arpeggios made me think it was for music programming. I'm well confused on it's purpose now.
There's all kinds of text keyboard mappings including some like court reporter's input devices.
i don't actually know a lot about split/ergo/mech's and don't know of any non-rabbit-holey info sites but you can learn a bit about 1 and 2 handed split ergo's and ZMK/QMK firmware mappings at https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/
I mean, a nice thing about DIY-ing it, you can just program it with whatever keys you want:) You could even have a layer for whatever game and a layer for full typing.
I want a pen shaped gyroscopic mouse to use while watching/interacting with stuff through AR glasses, just needs to point click, right click & two buttons for custom keystrokes
Agree pens are underrated as input over mice. Or for ar (fingers).
Maybe apple will make a pen input for a Vision Pro thing someday… though knowing them it’ll be some crazy vision based tracing system thing that requires special hardware in the headset that would require you to update your Vision Pro to the newest model to use it.
I had vague ideas, a few years ago, of integrating a keyboard into the handlebar of a recumbent tricycle (it would need to not interfere with braking, but there’s a fair bit of leeway left for useful design). Modelling clay had indeed not occurred to me! Nor had I realised how chorded keyboards could hook directly to GPIO pins. If I’d seen this back then, I probably would have gone ahead and prototyped something right away. Alas for this vision (though not alas in general!), I got married instead and my long-distance cycling days are behind me. But I’m still rather tempted to play with this, it looks fun and surprisingly straightforward, even if I can’t immediately see a good practical purpose in my life. Just last week I happened to see a box of epoxy modelling clay and wondered what it would be like to use… though I suspect it might harden too quickly for this.
Great to see someone trying to innovate. It's surprising humans haven't come up with a better input method than an old school keyboard. Who would have thought that a typewriter from 1874 would still be so visible on a modern Macbook!
As I hate tapping on glass, mistyping non-stop, I’m always evaluating options. This is an awesome project and a great write up, but we want more! :) Please consider published a video so we might see it in action (also showing the build process would be appreciated).
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadThe Twiddler gives me hand cramps, so I might give this one a shot. (It's low on the pile, however.)
Decades on now but still trying to find wearable computing stuff that can drag modern computing back to the early 90s (spending years trying to recreate the original Private Eye [0] display). Checking that out on wikipedia right now just fired a harmony of so many nostalgia neurons:-
>The Student Electronic Notebook consisted of the Private Eye, Toshiba diskless AIX notebook computers (prototypes), a stylus based input system and a virtual keyboard. It used direct-sequence spread spectrum radio links to provide all the usual TCP/IP based services, including NFS mounted file systems and X11, which all ran in the Andrew Project environment.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wearable_computer#1980s
Another thing that jumps to mind is the minichord[1], a nominally open-source synth/instrument.
I just love seeing these little devices people can come up with given the proliferation of the necessary devboards and tools. Nice project.
I wanted this so much I started programming on my phone with Termux. Yes, on a touch screen.
i don't actually know a lot about split/ergo/mech's and don't know of any non-rabbit-holey info sites but you can learn a bit about 1 and 2 handed split ergo's and ZMK/QMK firmware mappings at https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/
ZMK's docs are pretty good https://zmk.dev/docs/keymaps
I want this not for typing all the letters and numbers, but just the keyboard shortcuts to play Empire Earth V4 VR
- until that fantasy materializes maybe enough typing for an Age of Empires type game without being stuck at a full keyboard,
something like this maybe the perfect in-between ps4 controller and full keyboard for many things.
Maybe apple will make a pen input for a Vision Pro thing someday… though knowing them it’ll be some crazy vision based tracing system thing that requires special hardware in the headset that would require you to update your Vision Pro to the newest model to use it.
- play doh
- IMU would be incredible
- less key version is good idea
Surely, there has to be a better way.