This concept might well be the best thing since vi, itself!
A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
91–100 of 140 posts
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that could be improved with a higher resolution sensor, but the question is whether you could build such a thing while retaining space for physical keys. IIRC, current gesture recognition still takes a couple hundred milliseconds on modern consumer touch screens (iPhones, etc.), especially for the "click" action.
Couldn't you make the keys transparent and put the IR sensors below them?
A lot of plastic is already IR transparent but totally opaque in the visible spectrum. You can hack a cheap camera and take out the IR filter to make a neat "xray camera".
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#93I rigged one of these up with a theremin and a laptop back in 2007.
How insanely cool. I'm going to have a go at this with the Arduino - I recall last time I wired up a theremin that the right photo resistor can be quite accurate.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#94Strange that the "swiping & pinch to zoom" gestures (starting at 41) are exactly opposite of how they work in an iPad. I can understand swiping being backward - people can disagree about "move the camera" vs. "move the paper" - but pinch-to-zoom-in is wrong in all contexts. ah, microsoft. you've got this cool research, but somehow you manage to make the usability all wrong. how did these people not notice that they i…
> people can disagree about "move the camera" vs. "move the paper" - but pinch-to-zoom-in is wrong in all contexts. It's not wrong, it's just another manner of perspective: "shrink the aperture" vs. "shrink the paper". > how did these people not notice that they implemented pinch-to-zoom backward from how it works on their phones? On a touchscreen, it feels like you're actually working with the content directly, but…
Sure, there is a model that can explain it. Same w/ camera-vs-paper in swipe.
By "wrong" I mean "does not work that way in any other device, and so violates the user's by-now-fairly-well-burned-in expectation". So, in terms of the principle of least surprise, wrong.
Wilfully so, given that (to my knowledge at least) pinch-to-zoom has only existed for a few years and has only worked in this one way.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#95The Surface's Touch Cover has these gestures too.
The Type Cover doesn't, however it does have a neat trick where it seems to be able to sense your fingers nearby and activate the backlight. I always wondered what method it uses to do that and how hackable it is.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#96Not sure about this specific execution, but the idea of having a unified input surface is very appealing. 3D gestures have also been floating around, but seems like this is the closest I have personally seen to something that is close the current reality of computer use. That said, the rotation of the image gesture seems overly confusing. Mouse or trackpad seem like they would be an easier way to go...
I would have reached the mouse and rotated the stupid picture in fraction of the time, not even having the need to remember application-specific gestures.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#97The idea of turning the surface of the keyboard into a trackpad is very cool, you could almost get rid of the mouse. Except for, how do you click the mouse pointer? Accidental clicks of keyboard keys is probably what makes it impractical.
Using the tracpad on an Macbook Pro, I don't usually find myself clicking, but mostly using gestures such as tapping. Even two finger tapping is recognized. I don't see why one of the crazy gestures this cool thing can recognize couldn't represent what we currently think of left click and another for right.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#98Shut up and take my money!
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#99Brilliant! Not sure I like that particular implementation (with IR), but the idea of having the whole desktop keyboard work like a giant track pad is an enticing one. Can a track pad surface be integrated into every keyboard key?
I always wanted this to exist. But ofcouse, never had the hardware skills to make one.
I have the same feeling as you about the IR thing. makes me if they are only BETWEEN keys, wouldn't the make the sensing in accurate?
My HP laptop's mouse buttons are actually part of the trackpad itself. That is to sya, you can even move your finger over them and it still functions as if you are using the track pad. so, couldn't we extend this to the entire keyboard? It's just a really cool concept to having them merged as one. It wouldn't disrupt you each time u have to use the mouse. You can just do it right on the keyboard with moving you hands all the way to the mouse or keypad!
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#100The idea of turning the surface of the keyboard into a trackpad is very cool, you could almost get rid of the mouse. Except for, how do you click the mouse pointer? Accidental clicks of keyboard keys is probably what makes it impractical.
Using the tracpad on an Macbook Pro, I don't usually find myself clicking, but mostly using gestures such as tapping. Even two finger tapping is recognized. I don't see why one of the crazy gestures this cool thing can recognize couldn't represent what we currently think of left click and another for right.
well yes, most of us tap instead of clicking. question is, how would it differentiate a "tap" from a "keypress" if trackpad and keyboard are in the same place?