21–25 of 25 posts
I've always wondered about the usability of a chording keyboard with a smart phone's edge (or an xPad) and four areas under the fingers. (Four buttons is quite few combinations. You probably need the thumb too, with two-three alternative buttons for it.) It would be easy to have a learning mode which give feedback about possible combinations, since it is on a screen. My only (hobby) programming for mobile has been on…
My friend Zack made one called asetniop: http://asetniop.com/ Now he's working on something similar for Leap Motion and Google Glass: http://dextype.com/
My thinking is that a Leap Motion could be used with a standing desk (my current preferred desk setup), in combination with existing keyboard and mouse, to replace key combos to the OS like switching windows/tabs, window management (maximize, minimize, expand to left half of screen, etc.) as well as macros for common commands we type all day (`git push` or running the tests, for example.)
Orthogonally, i've always wanted a decent pair of foot pedals just to cover Shift, Control, Option and Alt or run key macros. It might be possible to coopt one of the new USB guitar pedals that also control DAW (Logic, ProTools), shd investigate something like: http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-TCE-GSYSTEM-LIST
One thought, since the Teensy can detect button press and button release events, is to code a vim mode where holding the pedal puts you in insert mode and releasing the pedal hits ESC to leave insert mode. We'll see how that works out in practice.
For 3 pedals, you could go with a DIY guitar pedal solution of project boxes and 3 momentary stomp switches (http://www.mammothelectronics.com/ is a good supplier of these parts) but I am unsure about the ergonomics of using one of these pedals constantly. (Guitarists simply stomp them on and off from a standing position. They're generally not pressing and holding the switches for 8 hours from a chair. So it might just cause foot/ankle problems due to the height of the front of the enclosure. More experimentation is needed on my part in this area.) Such a pedal would be way cheaper than the commercial versions from Kinesis and other manufacturers, however, and should be far more configurable / useful on Linux & Mac.
I built a 7-key chording keyset based on the Spiffchorder. It should be adaptable to almost any configuration. Mine came out a bit blocky and hard to use due to crappy buttons.
I did some research to see if anyone had open sourced a design for a 3D printer to print a Spiffchorder, but I didn't find anything. Maybe that's the next step? 3D printing these iteratively, to see what fits and what needs to change, seems like a huge win for developing a wearable chording keyboard that is comfortable and durable.
Orthogonally, i've always wanted a decent pair of foot pedals just to cover Shift, Control, Option and Alt or run key macros. It might be possible to coopt one of the new USB guitar pedals that also control DAW (Logic, ProTools), shd investigate something like: http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-TCE-GSYSTEM-LIST
This is in the works. While it won't be three pedals to start, I realized the simplicity of wiring the Teensy to a digital piano foot pedal (like this: http://www.amazon.com/M-Audio-Sustain-Pedal-Action-Keyboards... ) to build a relatively cheap, durable foot pedal for computing. I'll be posting about that sub-project soon on my blog. One thought, since the Teensy can detect button press and button release events, is…