Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by chronogram » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

Wouldn’t a T9 keyboard work better for people who texted before the smartphones? I imagine it’s like riding a bike: I’d probably be able to type blindly with one thumb again after a bit.

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

#92

Post by Joker_vD » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #62

KMnO4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you telling me that I have four fingers in English but five Finger in German? I'm confused, but Collins dictionary agrees with you: "Your fingers are the four long thin parts at the end of each hand." https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/finger

One of those pointless little distinctions that English language makes but many other European languages don't.

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.

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

#93

Post by cbsudux » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

Haha this is cool.

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

#94

Post by intrepidhero » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #68

intrepidhero wrote: post #63

It seems like every hardware geek makes one of these at some point. I think it's really cool. Designing a chording scheme for individual keys is a fun problem, kind of a nerd snipe. But in the end everyone concludes, "It's too slow to be useful." I think where the hand held keyboard might be really interesting is in combination with steno ( http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/ ), but I haven't seen that done.

I don't know about other people, but I definitely didn't intend it to be useful!

And that's just fine. It's a cool, fun project.

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

#95

Post by Kelamir » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

Also see "aaaaa" on F-Droid[1](for android)

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!

1 https://f-droid.org/packages/io.github.dkter.aaaaa

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

#96

Post by mcphage » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

JshWright wrote: post #45

mcphage wrote: post #38

Wouldn't a paramedic also need to type numbers? 31 is more than the number of letters, but not more than the number of letters + 10 digits.

Do you get the impression from the post that he was actually listening to my description of the use case? ;)

Not really :-)

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

#97

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

mromanuk wrote: post #36

I was disappointed at the end of the article, because there was no video of they using the keyboard. I love the project!

I don't think you'd very much want to see a video of me failing to type character after character for five minutes :P

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

#98

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

JshWright wrote: post #45

mcphage wrote: post #38

Wouldn't a paramedic also need to type numbers? 31 is more than the number of letters, but not more than the number of letters + 10 digits.

Do you get the impression from the post that he was actually listening to my description of the use case? ;)

HEY I LISTEN TO YOU SOMETIMES

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

#99

Post by leovander » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #41

StavrosK wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me a bit of this really cool project I saw the other day: https://there.oughta.be/a/macro-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.

It existed and was too fucking expensive for what it did and how it worked even in the terms of mechanical keyboard connoisseurs. (It was mechanical, but to cut some costs they used the worst Cherry switches they could lay their hands on.) 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…

Was that a precursor to let's say the Elgato Streamdeck[0]? Or did displays in keys already exist before the Maximus?

[0] https://www.elgato.com/themes/custom/smalcode/image/products...

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

#100

Post by mgr86 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

ravi-delia wrote: post #90

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!

>Poor guy messed up the timeline so much that even his stock market knowledge was useless!

--

Without the time available to go down the Englebart rabbit hole can you distill the story down some and share?