Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole • Hacker News Board

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#171

Post by gimboland » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #135

petercooper wrote: post #3

Quite the rabbit hole and definitely worth the read :-) This seems a good place to bring up an odd experience of mine. I've had carpal tunnel for decades but no longer get many flare ups. After trying numerous keyboards, the solution turned out to be using Apple's Magic Keyboard and whatever their huge trackpad is called. The key for me seems to be low key travel, a smallish keyboard (to avoid any stretching), and av…

I have two: one for each hand. I (used to) have to use my laptop a lot (meetings, traveling), so it didn't work for me to have a different keyboard at my desk. Then when I got stuck at home, I dug out my old kinesis but it was just too much effort to press those keys, and the cursor keys were just too far away. I could feel the muscles in my arms complaining. But the pronation and ulnar deviation was a pain, so I bou…

If you're using karabiner, you might want to use goku to configure it: much nicer: https://github.com/yqrashawn/GokuRakuJoudo

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#172

Post by jodrellblank » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #115

jerezzprime wrote: post #85

Why is there not an ergonomic keyboard with trackball or some other cursor device built in, so I can use the cursor and mouse buttons without moving my hands out of place? I currently use (and love) am Advantage 2, but I would happily drop another $400 on an ergonomic keyboard with mouse.

I had the same thought. I also love the trackpoint on Lenovo (previously IBM) laptops. But once I tries a split keyboard with a layout that really allows you to keep your hands in one position, I realized that moving my hand to a trackpoint or a trackball, and moving it to a mouse is an equal amount of disruption. At that, a mouse is a much more precise device. You can also check the "J joystick" idea implemented on…

Instead of the J key as a joystick, I want to see touch sensitive keycaps turned into a trackpad.

On iOS software keyboard, holding spacebar then swiping around moves the cursor. I’ve read that a blackberry android phone (Key One?) has similar on its hardware keyboard, but I’ve not seen one in real life or seen a video of that feature specifically (anyone know of one?).

I don’t see much about eyeball tracking these days; if I can look where I want the cursor to be, can’t I push a key to put it there? Surely with the rise of camera tech, computing power, and image analysis tooling that’s easier than it used to be?

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#173

Post by BrandoElFollito » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

I work in IT for 25+ years and had all kinds of keyboards. Some were fine, other less fine but all of them did the work.

I think that these (btw interesing) articles on keyboards are particularly relevant to pepole who constantly type (or hobbyists).

I work with a keyboard all day long and also afterward for fun but I type only a fraction of the time. I also look at the keyboard when doing so, so I am slow. But I do not need to be faster (it would be great, though) and my hands are not in the same position. I am not sure a special keyboard would help pepole in my case.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#174

Post by autocorr » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #161

autocorr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the rapid development of the hobbyist landscape from 3D printing, I suspect it will only be a matter of time before Kinesis comes out with a split design. Although the Kinesis is actually very easy to mod, and there are quite good resources on replacing the microcontroller with something that can run QMK. If you're not familiar, here's a link[1] to a PCB design that will route the ribbon cables to a Teensy. [1]…

Uh, Kinesis has several split designs already (Freestyle 1/2/Pro/Edge). Not shaped like the Advantage, but I’m pretty sure shaping is not popular enough to sustain the kind of volume they aim for. To be honest, I just wish they had an ortho version of the FS Pro.

You're right, I had assumed it was obvious from context since we were talking about the Advantage and Dactyl-Manuform specifically.

The market may be there though, since the Advantage has basically been the companies main product for RSI mitigation for decades and not gamers wanting a split to get the mouse closer in.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#175

Post by mattgibson » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #160

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two: one for each hand. I (used to) have to use my laptop a lot (meetings, traveling), so it didn't work for me to have a different keyboard at my desk. Then when I got stuck at home, I dug out my old kinesis but it was just too much effort to press those keys, and the cursor keys were just too far away. I could feel the muscles in my arms complaining. But the pronation and ulnar deviation was a pain, so I bou…

> I'm still using the magic mouse because I found click-drag with the trackpad to be shitty. Is there a trick to that? Not sure how the magic mouse works, but there's "drag hold" on the trackpad. You "double tap and hold". Tap once, and on the second tap you don't lift your finger off the trackpad, but start moving it around. Conveniently located outside the trackpad settings, in Settings -> Accessibility -> Pointer…

Three finger drag on the trackpad was a game changer for me. I was getting RSI before and that eliminated it entirely.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#176

Post by yc-kraln » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

I am a fairly competent (110+ wpm) typist, across a few different layouts (mostly qwerty/qwertz). I don't do this kind of deep customization for the same reason I don't use many plugins in vim or a browser: It would render me completely useless on 99.999999999% of the other terminals out there. I have a few different laptops, a desktop, and even with total control of those devices, I still end up on other people's hardware.

If you have medical reasons, I mean, I guess it's better than nothing, but this reads to me like the computing equivalent of moving into the woods and becoming a hermit.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#177

Post by jankotek » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #140

jankotek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had 3 of those, but they are very unreliable. Contact foil always fails after couple of years.

I haven't had one of the "Natural 4000 v1.0" keyboards fail yet. There was a run of them a few years back where the quality sucked though. I had new ones where brand new out of the box one had to mash some of the keys really hard to get them to register. As someone else said though, they are very susceptible to crap working its way under the membrane since its oddly shaped (and there are a bunch of individual section…

I did the cleaning bit, even tryed soldering. Maybe moist corroded something, no idea.

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#178

Post by bosie » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

nix23 wrote: post #74

bosie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly question but how do you start bouldering with CTS? I tried it (and weight training) but grabing any heavy weight seems very painful

Not a silly question, you just make routes where your body-weight is 80% on your feet (but that's always the goal), warmup your hands before 5min under really warm water. If it still hurts too much stabilize your hands looks like that: https://frictionlabs.com/blog/taping-fingers-in-rock-climbin... But ask your doctor how to stabilize your hand optimally. And again start slow no weight on the hands, it's about moving…

This is the first time i have heard about stabilising the hands. I can't make the connection, what would that do if you have CTS? if the muscle starts swelling it will compress the nerve and the nerve is already compressed due to the bone structure.

Gyroscopes are just straight up torture devices for me, as in, 10 seconds and i am out ;)

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#179

Post by top_kekeroni_m8 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

SimonPStevens wrote: post #60

I have a ergodox, and while I love it for writing prose in English, I struggle with it a bit for coding. It feels like it needs an extra column or two on the right hand side to have enough space for the symbols and special keys (arrows, home/end/pgup/pgdown, etc). I've tried all kinds of different placements or multi layer layouts to try and make everything comfortable to reach but whatever I try I can't quite get it…

Here is mine, might help you out a bit: https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/ergodox-ez/layouts/QaRmD/la...

I use it on Windows for .NET development mostly - I also tried to optimize it for the Slovenian language (to support čšžđć).

Re: Down the ergonomic keyboard rabbit hole

#180

Post by swader999 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #15

swader999 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution was a Theragun, trackball mouse and a Truly Ergonomic keyboard.

I keep getting advertised Theraguns and similar things almost non-stop on Instagram. Are they worth the expense? And how/where are you using it to improve carpal tunnel?

Yeah they are! With a bit of research you can find cheaper knock offs too. For carpal tunnel I hit the forearm, bicep, chest, neck. The scalenes in the neck seem to offer the most reward. A book on trigger points and a theragun are very good imo.