Pocket Keyboard Design Contest (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Pocket Keyboard Design Contest (2024)

chrischrislolo.github.io

60 pointsashenke11 comments

I'm glad Bubby won. I dream of having a truly portable programming setup, maybe even more than Wolfram's laptop holster. Ideally some keyboard like Bubby, a wireless thin client (phone?), and a heads up display, so I could walk around town while thinking or waiting for things to compile, or maybe blog while the display's off only turning it on to edit. Instead of a sedentary lifestyle I'd have an overly-active lifestyle.

There have been a number of single hand chorded keyboards for niche use cases, or wrist-attached keyboard designs that never went anywhere, etc. It never feels like it should be that hard, keyboards are just a fairly small collection of discrete inputs...

With no display, you could alternatively use some kind of TTS (letter by letter, word by word?) with earphones.

Oh, I've heard blind programmers get by with something like that... that's an interesting idea. I did voice-typing once and it immediately wrecked my voice but if I could type maybe it'd work. I guess that was more: can see, can't type.

I'm having this idea of using an Xreal Air 2 Pro combined with an RPi Keyboard as a mobile computer.

But these keyboards might be even better.

Just power an RPi with a large power bank in your pockets.

I've been really enjoying my Viture pro XRs for this kind of thing. Last weekend I put together a pretty nice wayland friendly cursor driver using Viture's linux SDK, that lets me activate cursor control with a key combo and keeps the cursor anchored to a spot in the outside world while I 'move the screen around it' by moving my head.

I was honestly surprised with how effective it is & how usable the cursor control is with the anchoring/axis inversion while walking around. With a 3x5 choc keyboard half in each jacket pocket, the Viture 'sunglasses' on, and my steam deck in my bag, I can comfortably be productive while being out and about walking the hills.

That sounds really interesting!

I also liked the FiNCH for similar reasons, having all the control keys on the side of the device, and only having the letter keys on the front would allow for a full keyboard typing experience on the go (not as good as the Bubby for walking and typing, but for typing on some system like a tablet, or VR headset i could see it being very useful.

Also, with different ideas like the Bubby, we can probably solve the issue of good portable keyboards for people with big hands. I have Corne split keyboard one at home but feel like i get "claw hands" after a few minutes because of the size.

I've spent 400+ hours working with a Nreal glasses, Android running Termux in Samsung Dex, and a Twiddler single handed chorded keyboard which is similar to the bubby.

The future is already here if you work in a terminal. This entire set-up fits in a 1 liter dry bag, but gives me about 70% of my desktop productivity as measured by completion time on 10 leetcode medium exercises, alternating first implementation between devices. For tasks requiring less pondering, this probably drops. For tasks requiring a lot of thinking and little rote terminal work, I suspect my productivity is higher due to improved creativity when I'm outdoors. LLms are ever improving this situation, with raw typing speed becoming less important.

The learning curve is significant though. I probably invested 40 hours to reach the 40 wpm and competency with special symbols necessary for real coding work before I was at all productive.

I'm also an exceptional case for a viability study on this mode of working though. I am a very hyperactive person that thrives outside. This means that I do better work when I'm able to work from a trailhead, ripping quick laps on my mountain bike to think through hard problems. I used to do this by parking my campervan with a full desk and starlink at the trailhead. Now I find I can throw my Twiddler and glasses in my MTB pack and ride straight from my house, stopping wherever ideas flow to write and code. I'm able to provide very deep insights on areas of vast complexity for my consulting clients by working this way, where I would lack the focus to retain context and continuity of thought indoors.

Anyway, I've topped out at about 50wpm with the Twiddler, curious to see if folks are able to exceed that with the bubby and may consider a switch!

Aw, if I had known about this contest, I would have submitted Keyyyyyyyys!

https://www.stavros.io/posts/keyyyyyyyys/

What did your superhero friend say to the final product?

He said "huh.".

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