One Handed Keyboard
github.com
github.com
There's probably something with the position of the hand when you move the mouse as well. At least I seem to be moving mostly the wrist when I use my mouse, meaning that my hand and forearm are not always aligned; without this alignment, I feel there's more strain on the wrist when typing.
Could you do a thing with magnets where you have a special mousepad as well with the pad being all one pole pointing up and the device the same pole pointing down?
Also my imagined device would not need the full keyboard, just the full right side of a qwerty keyboard.
Also you have to keep a much bigger area clear for it.
> Our goal is to create fun and engaging videos.
I wonder whether they are more into video-making or tech.
I've been watching them in Chinese for a while. Their video production evolved through the years by leaps and bounds. Their technical skill also skyrocketed. But it started as a channel with technical reviews and some DIY.
If you want to try to watch their videos with AI translation, you can try this: https://space.bilibili.com/163637592 For example, an artificial flower made of memory metal: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gN411M7kh/
It's got a soft cheery non-intrusive sound that I really like compared to the usual louder mechanical keys/switches that I hear in videos.
You can check if you find the switches colors here(it looks like an Akko purple pro, but not quite) https://keeb-finder.com/switches
Whereas rtings has a filtering list that also has sound profiles in the review pages.
It's a fun experience, and a nice reason to play around with SMD soldering techniques. I had my daughter (4 years) solder the hotswap sockets.
Worth checking out the miryoku layout, which is optimized for small keyboards, where I recently added sensor bindings for ec11 encoders[1].
You can get aula f75 for cheap, arround 50$, there are plenty of sound tests on youtube as it's very popular.
I got that version and I am happy, but if I was to buy a new one I would get the full size f108 because it's important for me to have distance between arrow keys and other keys. And tbh I would just get an apple keyboard or something similarly slim because it's more confortable for me. However for thicc (mechanical switch) keyboards, aula f75 has great specs and sound at a very good price.
https://www.youtube.com/@HTXStudio/videos
I love the one about the automated trash cans.
Essentially, hold down a thumb key and WASD (well, ESDF) moves the mouse.
Does charachorder support Dvorak-like layout mentally? Not a 1-1 but something similar? Like vowels on left hand?
Granted, I used to be able to do this with custom firmware on the moonlander, but with the charachorder it feels more smooth
Basically this is how keyboards like “ultimate hacking keyboard” and what have you work: record arbitrary keystorkes, macros.
(Definitely adding this to my list)
Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/
Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
On OS X you can achieve this with Keyb, Karabiner Elements, etc. It's also easy to do with a programmable keyboard with ZMK/QMK. I've set up my Kinesis 360 Pro this way, being symmetrical means I can access every key easily. Hardware support for sticky keys also helps quite a bit.
(If someone is interested in taking the site over and bringing it up to date, please open an issue.)
It's amazing how quickly you adapt. I have to put my mouse to the left of my keyboard and whereas before I was a touch typist, I now have to look.
And I can use a standard keyboard without undue hassle.
It still could be nice to have something optimized, though. If you ever design one, please share it, because I think you’d get more interest than you’d think.
I began to have interest in developing for everyone (primarily for differences for vision, though difference in hearing, memory, learning also) about 13 years ago, and got little support from the small company I worked for. We had a very color-specific interface, because we were space-limited. Then, wouldn’t you know it, our next manager was red-green colorblind, but it didn’t bother her.
I got jaded about it, learning that basically no one cared enough, and that people just get ignored and struggle with their adaptive devices. This still pisses me off, and I was once thinking heavily about applying a job where I could do something about it, but I don’t have the required background.
With AI, there’s beginning to be almost no excuse for someone not to add first-class support for all types of people into their interfaces and process, but people still continue to design like everyone is a twenty-something y.o. with full hearing, 20/15 full color vision, 130 IQ average, and no memory or learning differences or other modalities.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
>It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand
I use a Glove80 as my daily driver right now, although the price tag to build quality ratio is not amazing, so idk if I would recommend it particularly. But there's a massive world of ergo keyboards out there--surely the right one for you exists somewhere!
I wish these were also commercially available... I'd love to pay for one of these... I know it's open sources, but I don't know the language nor do I have the skills to construct one myself.
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
What would have made it easier is if it could infer the right key like an autocorrect
i've been using such a keyboard for two decades.
https://www.maltron.com/store/p19/Maltron_Single_Hand_Keyboa...
Microwriter devices produced ASCII directly.
But the fundamental problem with one-handed keyboards is that as soon as you only have one hand, you step into specialisation.
People's hands and one-hand abilities are actually quite variable. People who have never had two hands have different hand agility to people who lose a hand in adulthood, for example.
Two-handed keyboards and two-handed typing masks so much of this variability, because you can be a fast and efficient typist even with your hands straying across the keyboard and using only two or three fingers on each hand (say, two on non-dominant hand, two and thumb on dominant).
One-handed keyboards, by contrast, need to be more optimised for individual one-handed typists when any economy of scale is already difficult to achieve.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
I've been designing my own one-handed keyboard for 3 years. My main problem is that both of my wrist suffers from RSI and either wrist can ocassionally acts up with different levels of pain. (I also have shoulder problem.) They can become practically disabled temporarily for a few weeks, or just quite painful for me to avoid using it. So my desiderata are a bit different from permanently one-handed people.
Interestingly my right wrist is acting up in the last couple weeks so I've been going through a iterative redesign phase recently. I probably will write up a blog post in the future when I have the final design, I'm going through it briefly below:
Desiderata: (first three are directly from the temporarily and random disabled hand criteria)
- primary used for two hands - each hand should be able to single-handedly control the computer - skill transfer from two hand to one hand: since one hand use is oacassional, retraining time should be minimal - based on the research in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327051hci1101_... which eventually becomes a producten https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/ , the concept of a mirror key becomes a requirement: with the hold of a mirror key, the key at the mirror image position is active. An implementation detail is that the mirror key is a dual function key: on tap it is space, on hold it is mirror. I've implemented other possibility but find that the design in this research is better than others I come up with. - symmetric keyboard would facilitate this, where many split keyboards already is. - I must be able to buy them off the shelf. I do not have the skills to design it from scratch, nor do I afford to put more strain to my hand to assemble it from parts. - ergonomic must be one the of the primary goal of the keyboard, to minimize RSI. Speed is not important at all for example. - from my empircal experience, split keyboard, espeicially true split keyboard would encourage a better wrist and shoulder ergonomics. Hence I require split keyboards.
Based on these criteria, I bought ZSA Moonlander (QMK based) personally and Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro (ZMK based) for work.
The mirror key based design is currently at
- Moonlander https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/QwA3z/latest/0
- Adv360 Pro: https://github.com/ickc/Adv360-Pro-ZMK/tree/dev
The ZSA training site is useful to iterate this design process: after each iteration I'd train per single hand and see if it works. For example in my earlier design I mainly focused on testing single left hand use and later found it doesn't quite work for single right hand.
Finally, macOS sticky modifier is used to hold modifier with a single hand. I.e. Ctrl+Opt+A becomes Ctrl+Opt, release, A. This is because OSM in QMK cannot handles one-shot of multiple modifiers well. Without doing fancy thing, you need to do Ctrl, release, Opt, release, A.
Same design working across Moonlander and Adv360 is important. Layout differences is not that much thankfully, but firmware difference can be a pain.
Lastly, I recently bought a Silakka54 for the ocassions where the setup hassle of either is too high. Basically either lap use or going to a meeting. I think my current layout design is adaptable to it but I'll see.
"Yes, just the one thank you."
https://www.contourdesign.com/collection/contour-slidermouse