Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard
stavros.io
stavros.io
Englebart had a iOS app that allowed you to chord type as well.
Great write up. Question: why does the one keycap on the 'behold' photo look like it is so much less high? (on the other photo they seem identical)
One of the keycaps is from a different row, so it has a different height on one side, but on the other side they're the same height.
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Without the time available to go down the Englebart rabbit hole can you distill the story down some and share?
I also watch far too much Sci-Fi so my brain is wired to assume people are time traveller and such like :D
Relatedly:
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard H. Aiken
Would be kind of neat if I could "hear" a blog post as I was typing it, and maybe eventually even learn to listen to text transcribed as music.
- they have 5 fingers
Joking aside, that's a really nice project: congratulations!
The most important key-chord is space, followed by backspace.
>The name "Chiroptera" derives from Ancient Greek: χείρ – cheir, "hand"[4] and πτερόν – pteron, "wing".[1][5]
I'm confused, but Collins dictionary agrees with you: "Your fingers are the four long thin parts at the end of each hand."
Another example is "velocity" vs "speed"—what other vector quantity has two distinct names, one for the vector, another for the vector's magnitude? The acceleration doesn't, for example; and distance and displacement are two slightly different concepts that deserve two distinct names.
#groan
any of the five terminating members of the hand : a digit of the forelimb especially : one other than the thumb
That seems more correct to me because I don't think in normal usage saying that "most people have 10 fingers and 10 toes" would be considered an inaccurate statement. And, if someone said they have four fingers on their right hand, you'd assume they meant they were missing a digit.
And even the Collins dictionary has a countable noun meaning with the usage example: "The fingers of a glove are the parts that a person's fingers fit into."
> Though here is the definition from Merriam-Webster, which
> I'd consider the standard reference for US English.
The nuance is sometimes important, M-W was the first dictionary to give "figuratively" as a definition for the word "literally" due to the way some people use the word "literally" online.
I also think you'll find a lot more organizations that use MW as their reference standard than other US dictionaries.
Prescriptive: Describes how language should be used.
Descriptive dictionaries are highly favoured by those who like to effect change (I'm deliberately avoiding the word Liberal because I'm not in the US and I understand that word to be politically charged for many HN readers). Prescriptive dictionaries are more favoured by those who keep traditional values. Descriptive dictionaries can be used to say "I'm using the word correctly" and prescriptive dictionaries can be used to say "you're using the word incorrectly".
> Are you telling me that I have four fingers in
> English but five Finger in German?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb#Thumb_and_fingers
Colloquially, for many (most?) English speakers, the thumb is a finger:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=4+fingers%2C5+...
A strawberry is a berry. I don't care if biologists or botanists or whoever use a narrower technical definition in their research papers. The colloquial definition is just as valid. Prescriptivism-by-authority can take a hike. Yes, I will die on this hill.
Edit: this is a 1984 reference for those who aren’t familiar with that book or haven’t read it.
There is no user "CyberRabbit" by the way, maybe dang would rename your account if you ask him?
Edit: oh. Likely a 1984 reference. Never mind now. Leaving comment as it is though
I don’t know if I would say I “refuse” to use email. I simply opt not to because I am privacy conscious. I also do not browse the web with cookies or JavaScript enabled. If that’s “bizarre” to you well then I guess I am a bizarre person but I deserve a bare minimum of respect just as all humans do.
> Publicly complaining about the consequences of that decision is another layer of strange behavior.
I literally never complained about anything. Someone else initiated a question at me about my communication with dang and I shared the results of that communication. I am not bothered at all by not being able to request a name change nor have I ever expressed resentment towards anyone for not being able to request a name change. My screen name is not very important to me. I feel like I am being unfairly judged here.
It hasn’t been a second thought of that being something to point out.
However I guess in an in person situation, it may come up more as a “thin”
You sticking to your guns and not using cookies or JS shows me your principles are legit.
Normally and what my comment was referencing, are people who tout one abnormal or specific thing they do or don’t do. Like how awful FB or one of its properties are. While they happily go on every other data and privacy invading site/company.
I parsed his profile line as a disambiguation.
Something like:
My handle is not cyber-"rabbi", so ignore the religious overtones.
I intended "rabbit" and did it wrong. The UI has this irritating quirk, but I'm not motivated to enough to really fix it.
Not that important.
Accommidating as many people as possible is good, but you can never accommidate everyone. Same goes for all of these "things programmers believe about X", be it names or whatever. You absolutely need to provide working product for majority of people first and majority of people have at least two names or in this case 5 fingers.
Since you used the word "technically": actually the thumb is considered a finger in anatomical use (which is about as "technical" as you can get) just as the hallux (in popular jargon, "big toe") is anatomically considered a toe, despite having its own name.
In a prior life in pharmaceutical development we had a drug program in which this was specifically important.
Difference is one is generic for typing anything, and the link there is purpose-built on a per-application basis, but the idea of having a small amount of keys for a precise job is very interesting.
(Side note, anyone remember the Optimus Maximus, where each key was an LED screen? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard)
I'm in love with this, I have to build it. Thanks for the recommendation!
> (Side note, anyone remember the Optimus Maximus, where each key was an LED screen? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard)
Yeah, what happened with that? IIRC it never materialized.
Still, it could be praised as a proof of concept that such things were doable. I hear there's a kickstarter on a keyboard with Eink screens, which is reportedly not as hideous.
The Lebedev studio also produced an Optimus Mini Six macro pad which was more useful and lived a bit longer after the Maximus bit the dust.
That's factually wrong. Debunked many times on HN and yet still repeated.
[0] https://www.elgato.com/themes/custom/smalcode/image/products...
Chord starts with first key depressed and ends when last is released.
One-key chords: 5
One of 5 keys to press, one way to release key.
Two-key chords: 40
1 of 5 possible starting keys, 1 of 4 possible second keys, 5x4 20 openings.
With 2 keys held in, two ways to release: 1 of 2 keys to release first, 1 remaining key to release last.
A total of 40 (20x2) 2-key chords, 45 total chords so far.
3-key chords: 360(*)
5x4x3 for 60 openings. 1 of 5 first keys, 1 of 4 second keys, 1 of 3 third keys.
3x2x1 for 6 releases. With 3 pressed, 1 of 3 to release first, 1 of 2 to release second, last key released.
Total of 360 simple(*) 3-key chords.
405 (5 + 40 + 360) chords so far.
Yeah, biggest effort is not the hardware, but wiring the muscle memory, but I figure out motor system should be great at this if you're motivated.
(*) Simple chords - where we first just press and then just release, more options are available if we are ready to keep the sequence going by pressing and releasing and pressing again.
NOTE: Not original, this is my take on some one else's scheme, I'll look for the reference.
See:
The Cybernetic Chordic Keyer: A simple low cost high performance multikeyer for wearable computers or the like
Steve Mann
Pdf at http://wearcam.org/keyer
Damn I had a good laugh at that.
Here is an emulator: https://www.sainsmograf.com/labs/t9-emulator/
Type `422537` to receive `hacker`. You hit `2` twice to get `ac`, not `b` - and it picks `ac` given the context.
I think the only limit is the time it takes to train a human to write using such keyboard. And perhaps more problematic how bored said human would get, and hence, give up :)
I'm sure you could even make T5 though it probably works less well with only 5 keys.
For those who don't remember: T9 would have one key for "abc", own for "def" and so on. You didn't have to tap the first two key twice to type "be". You would simple tap the first and the second key, then it would look for words matching "(a|b|c)(d|e|f)" and conclude the most common such word is "be".
I think you could further argument it with grammar awareness, so really you tapped the length of the word. For ambiguous words you would have a key to switch between words.
Everything was deterministic, so you'd quickly be able to type without looking.
For latin script you can combine them: 1 for a or b or c, swipe left for a, swipe up for b, swipe right for c, etc.
But the upside to prediction is that you don't even need to know how to spell perfectly.
Maybe letters that sound similar could be on the same key... If you were to reinvent the system.
If you can effectively type 70,000 characters with 26 keys, certainly you can type 26 characters with 5 keys. It would be even easier if you made it two handed.
(In other words, I think this could someday be a practical text input method)
There were also some pants in the early 90s that had some of these built into the thighs of the pants.. so you could type with your arms basically at rest on your lap or at your side.
Typo. 2^5 = 32, but should probably say 2^5 - 1 = 31, since not pressing anything is a no-op.
I love your dual use chorded keyboard and remote detonator. Please keep creating the craziest stuff possible!
The multi presses reminds me a lot text messaging back before smartphones. Most kids could type quickly without really looking and using just a thumb.
In reality, laptops are quite common on ambulances, and get used during many (even most) "routine" calls. The issue with note taking is with more critical patients, and there are a variety of reasons why a notepad and (cheap, disposable) pen are the best solution. The biggest reason is because I can use them with a gloved (potentially contaminated) hand and not worry about how to decontaminate them, since I'll just throw them out. This device has many of the same failure modes as the laptop (namely, it would be impossible to clean).
A lot of medics will skip the pad and just write on the non-dominant gloved hand. Personally, my favorite technique during especially busy calls is to put a strip of 2in/5cm wide cloth medical tape on my thigh and just write on my leg.
But "practicality" wasn't really the point here...
The other, more subtle, reason is that free form handwriting gives me a lot of flexibility in on-the-fly formatting to emphasize important information, etc.
"Those are some nice empty whiskey bottles there, wow, let's see..."
maybe you could use time as an input factor as well wait for a while counts as a linefeed wait for a longer while counts as a 'tab back'
that way with some practice you could indent without doing it explicitly
So now I have to add an IP65 rating? These requirements would have been better communicated at the start of the project, sigh...
At $2 each, they're fantastic.
He had a keyboard in the handles, 4 bits on each hand
I remember in the late 70s seeing keyboards like this for sale (via ads in the PC magazines of the day, like Creative Computing). What was most notable was they were built on a hemisphere (dome) which feels like a more comfortable shape for extended use.
I don't know how useful this might be for your friend (thankfully I have no idea what the inside of an ambulance looks like) but this configuration could be mounted on the armrest of a chair or even better on the side of the chair so you could use it with your hand hanging straight down. (Or on your belt if you wanted to go full nerd, I suppose.)
I'm thinking add a 5th side-key and a second top-key and use the top ones solely as toggle, not as letters. This way you have 3*5 keys total and fill in the rest with a predictive model, maybe?
Or how about a layout with a second side-key column on the side that faces outward. You'd get 2*10 keys with just those columns and the toggle (or 3*10 with double toggles).
Personally, I'd rather have the chords than have toggles—a keyboard should really be stateless. Even the existing rarely used states (num lock, caps lock) do more to cause me frustration than help.
How about from a wheel?
1. https://chorder.cs.vassar.edu/doku.php?id=spiffchorder:forsi...
Unfortunately, I've had unsolved problems with 2 out of 4 orders over a couple years. First issue was the Georgi I ordered just never arrived. Only the lowest cost mail option was offered at the time, and it had no tracking or insurance. No refund. The second issue was the GergoPlex Heavy I ordered. I was able to work out tracked shipping at an extra cost, but after receiving it, I saw it had obviously been dropped by some delivery person. The GergoPlex Heavy was made of steel, and it was shipped in a thinly padded envelope instead of a box, so it must have hit the ground with a lot of force and insufficient impact protection. I bend back the MiniUSB port to make it functional, but the steel plate was also bent at a corner and was much less feasible to fix. My living in the US certainly makes shipping and handling from Canada more complicated, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable in expecting tracked/insured shipping and protective packaging for a $250 item. I've since given up on ordering any more, but this may just be my bad luck.
I still endorse the designs and the work.
Each keystroke is represented by a sequence of three notes that you sing into the microphone. Three notes produce two intervals which, measured in semitones, are converted into keys pressed (being, say, duodecimal digits). The relative duration of notes sang can be interpreted as modifier keys.
Buy a premium version that plays a fine selection of fusion jazz backing tracks with drums and synths, while you solo.
And this project can be done purely in software. I'm adding this to the ideas stack.
EDIT: each vim mode or keyboard layer is represented by a different set of chord changes in the backing track. Modulate key to change mode.
Love this guy's prototyping skills, I wish I could hammer out a project in that short a time. Takes me longer just to get the soldering right.
I'd quite like some sort of audio feedback while doing it, but I was accurate enough that it could still work as notes fairly well.
So hold the Digit1 button for a new heading, hold Digit2 for a subheading, hold Digit3 for a sub-subheading, etc.
Provide auto-transcription for each line with a custom dictionary (medical terminology). And keep the original audio in case transcription fails.
From it's description:
> most keyboards have way too many letters, making it way too hard to type. this keyboard only has 1 letter. typing is fun again!
Could the thumb key, be half pressed? Or maybe have 2 keys there, or two times pressed to simulate an additional key.
63! you can add the question mark, internationalization and even emojis!
Reminds me of https://www.artsey.io/
very entertaining read, and really cool!
If anyone knows community that like building things like this, I couldn't find anything. (mainly because i have no idea if it has a name)
The Romac is a numpad version. Same techniques all around. Use a Pro Micro chipset and install the QMK firmware and you’re off.
A few years ago in university I tried taking notes using an Apple wireless keyboard with my iPad in my backpack. It was surprisingly liberating to just type and not have to look at a screen. I'm sure I looked like an idiot but it was an advanced software engineering course so it wasn't to far leftfield :)
Some people take this to its extreme conclusion.
It would be so cool to mount a Soviet nuclear control room type panel under my monitor with those keys spelled out. Oh and a mute button.
Sadly it's difficult to see all the mapped keys at once, and the search can't search for the key (only for the action a key might be bound to) so making new maps is a bit tedious. It's possible to do so via making a plugin, but that's probably even more effort.
Fwiw I’d have fun playing with that. It’s a cool idea.
In general though, nothing is going to beat the speed (and disposability) of a cheap pen and paper.
More hardware posts on hn please. Thank you.