Wearable keyboard that turns anything you can touch into a typing surface | Hacker News Reader

Wearable keyboard that turns anything you can touch into a typing surface

tapwithus.com

57 pointsspektom36 comments

Having to actually put this on your hand makes it much less convenient for short-burst typing than a touchscreen. You have to take it out, fit it, and be temporarily disabled by it.

Using this for typing over long durations isn't more convenient than a keyboard and the friction would probably become uncomfortable over time.

I think this will encounter the same problem most wearables have finding product-market fit. The bar is already incredibly high in terms of the speed and ease of use of consumer electronics. If you've added even 1 physical step that adds even a half-second to an action, people will always eventually default to the half-second faster way of doing something.

There's also the issue of personal consolidation. People will generally favor a single device that does 2 things over two devices that each do 1 thing, even if the more specialized devices perform better at their individual roles. This is why releasing the iPhone eventually cannibalized iPod sales. I don't see a wearable keyboard justifying pocket space for most people.

I actually struggle to find a use for this product even when I get very specific about the use case. If you're rock climbing, you still have to position the screen of the device you're typing on. This product just added to the number of hands I have to use. Even if the screen is mounted somewhere for you, what's the ideal use case? Texting while bicycling?

I agree that these are big hurdles for adoption. The device combines two big advantages though: requires no visual focus and needs only one hand. I want that badly.

I don't see why I would have to ever take it off, a few hardware generations in. It will always be there, powered by body heat. We're turning into cyborgs without the implants.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/269/

It looks like you have to learn a new system for typing though.

And if you did make it wearable, you'd have to put a bunch of extra smarts into it to make sure you don't just start typing messages to people.

Typing in VR, accessibility for amputees, a variety of business uses where one-handed device operation boosts productivity. The typing system design is actually more important than the device itself. If we can standardize a good universal system for one-handed typing, we can tweak the hardware as we go.

It seems less productive for longer typing sessions and too slow to "install" it on your hand for shorter ones. I wonder in which use cases would this excel. Truthfully, if I am to forego tactile feedback, I'd much rather prefer a wireless leap motion that I can place on a table.

Reminds me of this that fizzled out http://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/

I would consider that for $100 but not $500

You could easily make something like that. Half of an Ergodox would do the trick.

actually thinking about how I could use a button on mouse (middle mouse on my current one, or side buttons on some others) as a key to shift left side of keyboard to right side. That's really all I want. A way to have hand on mouse and still be able to type (though I avoid using mouse). Should be doable with autohotkey

Which brings us to perhaps the best review on Amazon: "Das bard es ver gad! A've traed et far tree weex ad et werx great! A recabed et ta aw Agazad watcxers! Fave stars!!!"

Maybe the reviewer was a Scot.

A wristband seems like a much less obtrusive way to accomplish this goal (tracking tendons or muscles in the forearm) and would be great integrated with a smart watch.

This looks promising http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/writing-in-the-air-...

I know that some of the finger muscles run down past the wrist, but I don't think you could get precise tracking of fingertip locations with the wrist alone.

I got a Myo off Kickstarter that tracks impulses in your arms and that was a struggle even consistently recognising gestures.

https://www.myo.com/

Hardware looked great, on-boarding was solid, but in reality it was pretty disappointing and has sat in a drawer since day two.

There's a startup in Austin doing a similar keyboard product: https://gest.co/

Personally I'm skeptical on the accuracy and usability of these keyboards.

I like the premise, but the foley typing sounds and look of the product make me feel like it is a mock up and the product does not exist.

Anybody have crappy footage of a guy on youtube using one of these things? I would trust that more.

edit: Great video below. THANKS!

https://youtu.be/Pq3exdcbU7U *interviewer tries it on 2:24

It's like 45 second in: https://youtu.be/Pq3exdcbU7U

Any ideas on how it knows where you "are" on the keyboard? I.e. How does it know you're pressing the "W" key?

Based on this 4-minute review video linked earlier [1], it seems it's not actually a QWERTY keyboard, but rather a custom scheme where specific finger-movements correspond to specific letters.

They say the five vowels are the basic tap on each corresponding finger, and other letters are more complicated.

They show and mention an app that trains you how to use it; think Dance Dance Revolution and other timed 'arrow' games where you have to tap out the correct response.

I think it'd be better if it assumed homerow placement on a QWERTY and worked from there -- to be able to calibrate it to your hand, e.g. by typing a little bit on an actual keyboard to pick up the placement of your fingers for each letter. There's an app idea.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq3exdcbU7U

looks cool for steno, where you one press of both hands to input a whole word. But they still have 2 keys per finger... https://youtu.be/JXQQzW99cAI

My guess is that it might be like playing an instrument like the trumpet. Where instead of pressing different combinations of buttons to play different notes you do different combinations of taps to type letters. It says it comes along with a game to get you used to how it works.

Ah their waitlist is hackable(or is it crackable?). They don't distinguish between "abc@gmail.com" and "a.bc@gmail.com" - so pretty much you can game the list and move to the top(I did something very similar when OnePlus 2 came out). So tapwithus mods - if you're listening - please fix this!

If I were these guys I'd be pretty focused on the VR market.

Scribblenauts VR will need keyboard input!

This reminds me to the speed typing one hand keyboards that I've read as the promise to faster writing in some places. However they were "old fashion", as in they were the future 30-40 years ago. I remember reading a conversation about how, as they stopped being manufactured now people who are used to them are crazy searching pieces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter

What an impractical-looking device. I don't use wearables, but I pretend to type without a keyboard all the time, touching my fingers to my palm. A good wearable should be shaped comfortably like a glove. Then, it should detect which finger and how bent the finger is upon touching the palm, which would indicate which column and which row on the keyboard respectively.

If we're using one-handed gestures to indicate X/Y position on a standard QWERTY layout, we're truly lost.

Ah, well I imagined at some point we'd have to type letters of the alphabet. Although, now that I think about it, I suppose dictation could help, but it's not likely to be as accurate, especially for the purposes of, for example, coding.

I was waiting for somebody to do this! Looks like they got it right and simple. Finally I'll get fine mobile text input :-)

I wonder whether our sensory system would work well enough to use such a simple strip for the back-channel too. Maybe by contracting the holes by the same patterns? I guess it would work, given how fast people can read Braille.

www.gest.co A better designed device that does not require you to learn novel patterns and can do much more

Looks like they were unable to continue funding and shut down in April 2016.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asdffilms/gest-work-wit...

I am constantly amazed at how crappy Kickstarter is. Almost everything is vaporware, and the things that do actually launch usually turn out to be garbage.

I don't think that is Kickstarter's fault -- the fact is that building stuff (particularly real, physical stuff) is hard.

I agree and disagree. No, Kickstarter couldn't be a neutral platform and also do things to ensure that projects panned out.

But Kickstarter could certainly be more transparent. They (and their crowdfunders) intentionally foster the idea that consumers are just pre-ordering real products. There isn't any large disclaimer that says, "Hey, your money might just be going down a toilet! Do your homework and make sure these people are legit!!" Kickstarter wants to (and does) feel like Amazon of the future, which is cool until you realize you're buying a future that will never exist.

In the end, it's really Kickstarter that suffers the most. I'd be willing to bet that having fewer projects (through vetting, curation, or whatever) with higher consumer trust would be more profitable in the long run.

Some companies use a successful Kickstarter campaign as a positive signal to attract investment.

If they set a low but reasonable goal and achieve it, it is ostensibly a positive signal that a market exists for whatever niche product they are building.

While the capital acquired through is almost always not sufficient to fulfil the orders, investment helps to.

This model fails when investment dries up and the second part of the plan does not work out.

This is probably what happened to gest. They had most certainly had a working prototype and were definitely not vaporware in the true sense of the word.

It could be that the only way to create a market for such a product is through an inferior product and less creative founders who have had successful exits in the past and can self fund.

If you can get it down to a set of gloves that use qwerty in the office I'm in

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