A few years ago Rob Nero, then studying Interaction Design at Malmö, did something similar for his master thesis:
A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
121–130 of 140 posts
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#122They said "mechanical keyboard" which got my hopes up, but nope, it's a bog-standard rubber-dome deal.
you do realize it's a research paper; they're not trying to sell it to you right now.
That doesn't mean they are allowed to forget using the right words. "Mechanical keyboard" is a very specific term for keyboards, it means that the switches used are of the 'CherryMX' type or similar. Scissor-switches are totally different, and do not fit the 'mechanical keyboard' description at all.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#123I wonder which IR proximity sensor they used. I'm currently using the OSRAM SFH7773 in my projects — it's the cheapest one I could find, but it is still quite expensive ($1.20 at qty 25 from RS/Allied). They are using 64 of them. I also wonder how they deal with interference. Each sensor emits IR pulses and measures the light that bounced back. On the SFH7773 at least, there is no way to synchronize the pulses to an…
I would have thought a single camera would achieve better fidelity than 64 proximity sensors.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#124I wonder which IR proximity sensor they used. I'm currently using the OSRAM SFH7773 in my projects — it's the cheapest one I could find, but it is still quite expensive ($1.20 at qty 25 from RS/Allied). They are using 64 of them. I also wonder how they deal with interference. Each sensor emits IR pulses and measures the light that bounced back. On the SFH7773 at least, there is no way to synchronize the pulses to an…
I would have thought a single camera would achieve better fidelity than 64 proximity sensors.
Where would you put the single camera to have a view of the fingers of both hands whilst on the keys? The 64 sensors are acting as a single camera I imagine [yeah sorry didn't RTFA].
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#125I can't wait to have "Ctrl-Meta- x" in a possible future version of Emacs...
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#126When is someone going to start replacing parts of the keyboard? Remove the function keys and replace them with quick gestures? Is there a copy/paste gesture on the way?
Rather than removing functionality of already crammed laptop keyboards, I rather think this will be used to get rid of the touchpad and allow smaller laptop form factors that still have full sized keyboards, e.g. new kinds of surface devices.
On a laptop wouldn't it be far easier/cheaper to just add a keyboard facing camera in the bezel and use that to track gestures? Indeed you could probably retrofit that using a standard webcam.
Most of the time I'm not using my webcam (on a Kubuntu desktop machine). It would be great to point it at the keyboard, do a "touch the corners" setup routine and then be able to do gestures. Perhaps map CapsLock to "GestureLock". Seems do-able with processing.org, perhaps http://www.silentlycrashing.net/ezgestures/ is a starting point.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ESC key, and all the function keys, on my Mac laptop are half height keys. Personally, I'd rather just have an ESC gesture, for example.
Replace one key with a gesture - ok. Replace all the 12 F keys and their secondary functions with 24 gestures - no thanks.
Your lack of imagination is disappointing. I didn't say that we need 24 unique gestures. I could throw out a straw man solution but let me simply say that some sort of convention is needed.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#128It's definitely cool, but I can't yet think of a single user interaction where it would be faster than just using shortcuts.
I could think of a few scenarios where I wouldn't prefer using the keyboard/mouse: * Controlling 3D models. * When doing presentations. * When watching a movie/video on fullscreen. * Cooking by following a recipe on the computer and not having clean hands.
> Controlling 3D models.
You give up the precision of a mouse though. I could maybe see it being used to rotate the viewport, but even there I think you'd want the precision.
> When doing presentations.
That's what god made the clicky devices for.
> When watching a movie/video on fullscreen.
You're going to be close enough to your keyboard to do that and adjusting the time to just the one you want with the precision of the mouse is going to be less convenient than scrubbing through with a gesture?
> Cooking by following a recipe on the computer and not having clean hands.
Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure how stuff dropping off your fingers might effect it but yeah I could see something like that perhaps.
#
For most things though the precision you're giving up doesn't seem likely to be worth it in terms of the time saved from moving a hand to the mouse.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely love using my Magic Mouse. Whenever I get on someone else's computer I'm trying to go back and forth on web pages and desktops with the mouse.
the sideway scorlling seems like the only worthwhile addition to me, other than that, i kinda like the feel of physical buttons and scroll wheel under my fingertips
I used to think the same way, and when I bought an iMac about 3 years ago I just stuck to the Magic Mouse that came with it. I will never go back as long as I'm using a Mac now - it just became part of my workflow so seamlessly that using a regular mouse is out of the question. I get just about all of the gestures that the trackpad offers with the precision of the mouse. I love it.
Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
#130Conceptually this is a pretty cool idea! I easily see the applications around web browsing or reading a doc, but a few practical problems stand in the way.
Navigation and clicking with the keyboard will be a huge problem. How could I move the mouse pad and simultaneously click? The demo video uses gaming, but most games still require use of both clicking on keys and a mouse click. If I tried to hold down a key on the keyboard, but wanted to click at the same time...do I have one finger move in mid air above some random part of the keyboard?
Hopefully there's continued refinement though...I'm surprised there hasn't been much thought about replacing extra keys with more customized multi-touch gestures.