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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

#171

Post by StavrosK »

JshWright wrote: post #131
harrisonjackson wrote: post #109

I bet a lot of what the paramedic friend types is repetitive and industry specific. Could speed things up with some macros/text expander type of functionality. The multi presses reminds me a lot text messaging back before smartphones. Most kids could type quickly without really looking and using just a thumb.

Hi, paramedic friend here. The whole "paramedic notes" thing was just a very dubious pretext. I was looking at a small notebook page of notes after a call (no patient identifiers, not that it would have mattered), and was curious if anyone would be able to make out a single word. Stavros is Greek, so he was the obvious choice. That's where the story in the post picks up (with a little creative license). In reality, l…

> (namely, it would be impossible to clean)

So now I have to add an IP65 rating? These requirements would have been better communicated at the start of the project, sigh...

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

#174

Post by bsanr »

dheera wrote: post #159
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

I thought it would be cool if I could base a chorded typing system off an actual digital piano and use the MIDI interface to type, and design it such that most words would actually sound nice if the digital piano outputted sound at the same time. I just haven't put in the time to figure out a good efficient system. Would be kind of neat if I could "hear" a blog post as I was typing it, and maybe eventually even learn…

Part of what makes music so wonderful (and universal) is that it encodes information somewhat more ambiguously than written or spoken language. You could probably see comprehension and memory dividends from transitioning to a music-based communication system - especially considering that we're hardwired to process music even more so than we are to process language - but I dunno if I'd want to give up the aforementioned aspects of the human experience.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

drinkcocacola wrote: post #132

I'll strongly suggest changing the approach from character input to phonetic input like the stenotype machines. Creating a nice set of rules prioritising writing speed is of course no easy task, however I think it is the only viable way in my opinion to make it usable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Hmktf9ZlY

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by macintux »

StavrosK wrote: post #59
tombert wrote: post #57

The esp32 never ceases to amaze me. I bought a set of five of them from Banggood awhile ago, and I was amazed how quickly I was able to build some pretty interesting stuff, like a wireless arcade controller (using the same bluetooth keyboard library that the author mentioned, actually).

It's fantastic, I have tens of them because I constantly use them around the house, in things like alarm clocks ( https://www.stavros.io/posts/do-not-be-alarmed-clock/ ), cat toys (no writeup there), scales (maybe later) and other random things. At $2 each, they're fantastic.

Absolutely love that alarm clock, thanks. I need to stop finding excuses not to play with embedded stuff.

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

#177

Post by jopsen »

chronogram wrote: post #91

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.

Coupled with a custom dictionary exactly.

I'm sure you could even make T5 though it probably works less well with only 5 keys.

For those who don't remember: T9 would have one key for "abc", own for "def" and so on. You didn't have to tap the first two key twice to type "be". You would simple tap the first and the second key, then it would look for words matching "(a|b|c)(d|e|f)" and conclude the most common such word is "be".

I think you could further argument it with grammar awareness, so really you tapped the length of the word. For ambiguous words you would have a key to switch between words.

Everything was deterministic, so you'd quickly be able to type without looking.

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

#178

Post by StavrosK »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #49
StavrosK wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are keyboards where each finger goes into four (five) switches, one on each side, but I imagine some combinations will be impossible to type without the keyboard being stationary relative to the hand.

Oh I've seen those (these https://www.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/comments/gsj4n4/im_gett... right?) but they seem completely unusable.

Yep! That sort of thing. I don't know, some people swear by them.

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

#180

Post by jopsen »

Skunkleton wrote: post #140
nvr219 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what T9 is. T9 is predictive text - you hit a combination of keys and it guesses what word you meant. Here is an emulator: https://www.sainsmograf.com/labs/t9-emulator/ Type `422537` to receive `hacker`. You hit `2` twice to get `ac`, not `b` - and it picks `ac` given the context.

T9 works well for common words. The poor doctor this keyboard(stick?) is being foisted on would not have a good time.

Tweak it with a custom dictionary.

I think the only limit is the time it takes to train a human to write using such keyboard. And perhaps more problematic how bored said human would get, and hence, give up :)

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