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An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

kianryan.co.uk

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Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#31

I have experience with both the FrogPad and the Matias Half Keyboard (I paid $95; now $595). The Frogpad never caught on with me. https://matias.store/products/half-keyboard The Matias Half Keyboard is based on a theory that our minds mirror each hand, so by holding the space bar to access the missing half keyboard, we already know what to do. I was skeptical. Recognizing that we're modal (do we even recognize that t…

> the Matias Half Keyboard (I paid $95; now $595)

Ha, same here. Seems like they discovered that the mainstream demand for this is quite low, but the reimbursement potential for ADA/HR purposes was much higher.

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#32

I can't imagine another cocktail party where my own one handed keyboard would be relevant, so here it is: https://github.com/trevorjay/Handler It's chorded, (based on the https://ardux.io/ layout), but I don't think chorded is really that hard to learn if you're actually willing to give it a week or two (which you have in any situation where you need a one hander). The key (ha) I've found is that you want the keys to…

What’s your max WPM with the one handed setup?

I won't lie, straight-up prose is much slower. I can just about break 120 wpm with a full QWERTY whereas I can only do roughly 40-45 single-handed. Typing passwords sucks.

The big 'however' here is coding. I also have a one-handed mouse from Elecom. Not switching between mouse and keyboard to navigate, combined with macros being less strain (basically no hand travel and sticky meta keys) means I'm faster editing code to the point I just eat the prose cost (or use my phone keyboard/dictation to compose longer prose).

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#33

I can't imagine another cocktail party where my own one handed keyboard would be relevant, so here it is: https://github.com/trevorjay/Handler It's chorded, (based on the https://ardux.io/ layout), but I don't think chorded is really that hard to learn if you're actually willing to give it a week or two (which you have in any situation where you need a one hander). The key (ha) I've found is that you want the keys to…

Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m curious if you have ever looked into the Tap Strap 2? I recently got one and it looks promising with preliminary testing but I haven’t invested much time learning and configuring it yet.

Wow. Unless I'm thinking of a different device, those were much more expensive the last time I took a look. That's super tempting.

Just giving a preliminary skim of the website, it looks like their alphabet doesn't include meta characters like CTRL, ALT, and WINDOWS? Is there a more advanced mode? When you customize things, is that done on device (just sending keystrokes as a Bluetooth keyboard) or do you need special software on the device you're interacting with? Learning aside. How accurate has it seemed so far?

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m curious if you have ever looked into the Tap Strap 2? I recently got one and it looks promising with preliminary testing but I haven’t invested much time learning and configuring it yet.

Wow. Unless I'm thinking of a different device, those were much more expensive the last time I took a look. That's super tempting. Just giving a preliminary skim of the website, it looks like their alphabet doesn't include meta characters like CTRL, ALT, and WINDOWS? Is there a more advanced mode? When you customize things, is that done on device (just sending keystrokes as a Bluetooth keyboard) or do you need specia…

Looking at the software, it looks at least as powerful as the Twitter: in-device keybindings, holds, macros, etc. This is super interesting.

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your max WPM with the one handed setup?

I won't lie, straight-up prose is much slower. I can just about break 120 wpm with a full QWERTY whereas I can only do roughly 40-45 single-handed. Typing passwords sucks. The big 'however' here is coding. I also have a one-handed mouse from Elecom. Not switching between mouse and keyboard to navigate, combined with macros being less strain (basically no hand travel and sticky meta keys) means I'm faster editing code…

As far as prose goes, that's not that bad - I was expecting a 5-10x slowdown.

How much do you use the mouse when navigating? Do you have something akin to vim combos or do you use mostly mouse? What kind of macros do you have?

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#36

I have experience with both the FrogPad and the Matias Half Keyboard (I paid $95; now $595). The Frogpad never caught on with me. https://matias.store/products/half-keyboard The Matias Half Keyboard is based on a theory that our minds mirror each hand, so by holding the space bar to access the missing half keyboard, we already know what to do. I was skeptical. Recognizing that we're modal (do we even recognize that t…

Another anecdata. I had a bike accident which took my left hand out of commission for a while. It was after the Matias keyboard became so expensive, and I was broke. But I was motivated enough to try the concept that I hacked together a software implementation that behaved more or less the same way on a standard full size keyboard by swapping to a mirrored system keyboard layout while holding the spacebar for a short time.

The software itself was buggy as hell (I learned just enough ObjC to get it kinda working), but even so the mirroring concept worked perfectly for me. It was basically no learning curve (full QWERTY to half QWERTY), and I only took a slight hit to typing speed. The first thing I did was prove it out by building another bit of software to relaunch the first whenever it crashed, and then worked full time with it for a couple months. Typing was never quite as subconscious for me as it is with both hands, but it was as close to that as I could imagine.

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m curious if you have ever looked into the Tap Strap 2? I recently got one and it looks promising with preliminary testing but I haven’t invested much time learning and configuring it yet.

Wow. Unless I'm thinking of a different device, those were much more expensive the last time I took a look. That's super tempting. Just giving a preliminary skim of the website, it looks like their alphabet doesn't include meta characters like CTRL, ALT, and WINDOWS? Is there a more advanced mode? When you customize things, is that done on device (just sending keystrokes as a Bluetooth keyboard) or do you need specia…

I have a Tap Strap 2. (Although only as of a couple of weeks ago, so still pretty new to it.)

Answering your questions, split into pros and cons:

## Pros

You can customise the layout, including meta keys like control/alt/windows. I think the "more advanced mode" is basically just designing your own layout.

It's honestly very accurate for a keyboard that is basically just tapping your figures against a table. It definitely misreads the odd input (or perhaps more accurately, it is sufficiently easy for me to waggle my fingers wrong), but it doesn't make so many that I'm really bothered by it.

I had an issue with the firmware on mine when I first got it, and the support team were super responsive. I really appreciated this.

The Android/iOS app is well designed for learning how to use it -- it comes with an excellently pedagogical typing tutor.

If you're curious, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go. IIUC the WPM most folks get with it is about equivalent to to other one-handed-keyboards, ~50 or so. I've found learning it to be pretty easy. (Substantially easier than learning a new layout on a regular keyboard, for some reason.)

It connects as a bluetooth keyboard, no special software required.

## Cons

Customising layouts is unfortunately a bit of a chore, being both tied-to-the-company and requiring additional devices. The layout must first be designed through a webpage on their site, which you need to log in to using your account. Then you need an Android/iOS device to actually connect to the TS2 and push the layout.

## Worth knowing

You have essentially five layers: default, double tap, triple tap, shift, and switch. Shift and switch are pretty similar to layers as you'll find them on most ergomech keyboards. However, the double and triple tap layers work by inputting the key corresponding to that chord on the default layer, then detecting that you're doing a double/triple tap, then inputting backspace, and then inputting the key corresponding to the chord on the double/triple tap layer. So if you'd like to use it for something like vim, then that first input might actually mean something! If that will affect you, then in practice you can't use the double/triple tap layers, and you only have 60% of the real estate to fit your custom layout into. That is just enough to fit basically a whole keyboard -- I've got a custom layout that does this -- but it took me some careful thought for how to cram all those keys into such little space in a logical way.

Re: An accessible one-handed keyboard, inspired by FrogPad

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't lie, straight-up prose is much slower. I can just about break 120 wpm with a full QWERTY whereas I can only do roughly 40-45 single-handed. Typing passwords sucks. The big 'however' here is coding. I also have a one-handed mouse from Elecom. Not switching between mouse and keyboard to navigate, combined with macros being less strain (basically no hand travel and sticky meta keys) means I'm faster editing code…

As far as prose goes, that's not that bad - I was expecting a 5-10x slowdown. How much do you use the mouse when navigating? Do you have something akin to vim combos or do you use mostly mouse? What kind of macros do you have?

Yeah, I was introduced to the Twiddler in the context of robot interfaces and while I can't find the study now, there were a couple showing that eventually the slowdown is down to the extra movement, which is almost exactly x3 on most chorded systems.

I use the mouse almost exclusively now, to the point going back to search/word/character navigation when a terminal won't pass mouse events feels excruciating.

Macros are mostly code refactoring in emacs. Things like moving blocks between brackets, repainting, stuff like that. These really benefit from sticky keys. No letter is closer or further from super, hyper, or alt because I hit the chord for the meta key and then the one for letter.

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