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Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

stavros.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#81

Post by CyberRabbi »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #78
KMnO4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, digits; a thumb is not technically a finger:)

Technically words can have more than one meaning. 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…

Yes words can have any meaning at all. Also War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Edit: this is a 1984 reference for those who aren’t familiar with that book or haven’t read it.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#83

Post by cghendrix »

samstave wrote: post #73

These were around as far back as the 80s IIRC - and when I was at Intel in the late 90s - there were stories of this one engineer, who would a recumbent bike down San Thomas Expressway to the SC campus, and he had chorded keyboard he made attached to the handles on his bike - and the legend was that he had a sat phone on his bike and he would code on his way into Intel while just keeping track of everything he typed…

Now that is wild. One of the more interesting things I’ve read on hacker news. Would love to learn more about this legend if anyone else knows.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#84

Post by titanomachy »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #48

Since there's a plenty of chorded keyboards already, someone should come up with some sort of a scat keyboard, or rather input method. 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 modi…

I like this idea a lot. And if there's a backing track you could add rhythm e.g. syncopation as another control axis...

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.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#85

Post by kybernetikos »

StavrosK wrote: post #17
praptak wrote: post #9

This is a simpler version of Twiddler: https://twiddler.tekgear.com/

Have you ever used that? It looks interesting.

I have the bluetooth version. I like it. I have learnt enough to use it reasonably well, but not well enough to use it as a daily driver. There is a significant hump to get over, and it's not easy to force yourself to practice with it. My latest problem with it has been that one of the keys has got reluctant to register presses, which makes it a lot more frustrating to use.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#86

Post by kybernetikos »

brassattax wrote: post #53

I often have ideas while walking and I always thought this kind of device would be good for jotting down thoughts while taking a walk... I could always use a phone with some dictation note-taking software, but I think a small chorded keyboard device that records everything, has a great battery life, and can sync via bluetooth or wifi would be very nice.

I have done this with the twiddler3 paired with my phone in my pocket (you can also use it in recording mode, but I didn't). I don't do it a lot, but I enjoyed it for what I did with it.

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.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#88

Post by rcar »

KMnO4 wrote: post #26
throwaway744678 wrote: post #23

Falsehoods programmers believe about hands: - they have 5 fingers Joking aside, that's a really nice project: congratulations!

Well, digits; a thumb is not technically a finger:)

I believe that the real intention behind the statement is that not all users of their product are going to have 5 working fingers if they've had some sort of accident or similar.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#90

Post by ravi-delia »

jnwatson wrote: post #11

This is called a chorded keyboard [1]. Like seemingly everything invented in the following 40 years, it was introduced by Douglas Englebart in the Mother of all Demos in 1968. Englebart had a iOS app that allowed you to chord type as well. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

Douglas Englebart is the proof to me that even if you could go back in time, it isn't necessarily true that you could leverage your knowledge of future technology. Poor guy messed up the timeline so much that even his stock market knowledge was useless!
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