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A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

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Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#71

Post by DonHopkins »

bch wrote: post #57
DonHopkins wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, great to see this, thank you so much, Ken! I'm lucky to own an original Engelbart mouse and chord keyset too, and I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them, making 3d printable models, and embedding metal and electronic parts so they work via bluetooth! The first step is to take it apart, measure and weigh the pieces, 3d scan it, and make a realistic 3d printable all plastic model (like an easy-to-print…

Hi Don. I think this stuff is great, and applaud your work, so don’t think of this as a slight (depending on the answer, of course): how practical is this? Again, if the answer is approximately “not at all practical”, that’s fair, but I guess I could also see it fitting somewhere on a spectrum like emacs vs vi, QWERTY vs Dvorak, etc…

I’m doing it for the looks and feels. Making it public and open so others can take a look and feel free. (Ha ha, I got a billion of 'em!) ;)

It does have a distinctive visual look and physical feel. And while it’s not as sleek or ergonomic as the latest Logitech mouse (who gave him an office at their headquarters from 1992 to 2007), it’s pretty great to actually touch and hold -- just to grasp firsthand how far input devices have come.

(Okay, now I’ve got nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-something of 'em!)

1) Historic Firsts: The Mouse

https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/162/

>Logitech celebrates "ONE BILLION MICE SOLD!" making headlines in 2008. See their press release, blog post, and billionth mouse celebration page with links to press kits, fun facts, and timelines. The event coincided with our 40th anniversary celebration of Doug's landmark demo, titled "Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing". Enjoy the following timeline from Logitech's celebrations.

1.0e+9) Logitech Ships Billionth Mouse. Coincides with Fortieth Anniversary of First Computer Mouse Public:

https://ir.logitech.com/press-releases/press-release-details...

>"What a wonderful coincidence that the leading mouse manufacturer has announced such a significant milestone in the same month that we celebrate Doug Engelbart's legendary public debut of the computer mouse," said Curt Carlson, president and chief executive officer of SRI International. "Logitech's product innovations support Engelbart's vision of human-computer tools for interactive and collaborative work."

∞) Doug Engelbart obituary:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/04/doug-enge...

>After that, Engelbart set up the tiny Bootstrap Institute with his daughter Christina, which survives as the Doug Engelbart Institute, providing a useful history of his life and times. From 1992 to 2007, Engelbart was given an office at Logitech's headquarters, before finally returning to SRI some 30 years after he had left it.

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#72

Post by DonHopkins »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #63
DonHopkins wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, great to see this, thank you so much, Ken! I'm lucky to own an original Engelbart mouse and chord keyset too, and I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them, making 3d printable models, and embedding metal and electronic parts so they work via bluetooth! The first step is to take it apart, measure and weigh the pieces, 3d scan it, and make a realistic 3d printable all plastic model (like an easy-to-print…

>I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them Cool, the artifacts should be preserved for people studying new haptics device designs. The MPU6050 is not a great IMU, but the cost might be your best option. >USB-C connector One can force the interface into legacy USB 2.0 HID mode, and I would highly recommend that approach if you are excluding a USBC device PMIC. The TP4056 also have some weirdness about enterin…

Just the kind of advice and wisdom I was hoping to hear, thank you! What would your ideal pick of hardware components be? Cost is not a major factor, since the cost of manufacturing a high quality durable case and sourcing the other materials will probably overwhelm the cost of the electronics. Universal usability and battery life and rechargeability are quite important though. So no "different thinking" charging cable ports on the bottom, pfft!

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#73

Post by Joel_Mckay »

DonHopkins wrote: post #72
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I want to make usable replicas by 3d scanning them Cool, the artifacts should be preserved for people studying new haptics device designs. The MPU6050 is not a great IMU, but the cost might be your best option. >USB-C connector One can force the interface into legacy USB 2.0 HID mode, and I would highly recommend that approach if you are excluding a USBC device PMIC. The TP4056 also have some weirdness about enterin…

Just the kind of advice and wisdom I was hoping to hear, thank you! What would your ideal pick of hardware components be? Cost is not a major factor, since the cost of manufacturing a high quality durable case and sourcing the other materials will probably overwhelm the cost of the electronics. Universal usability and battery life and rechargeability are quite important though. So no "different thinking" charging cab…

> What would your ideal pick of hardware components be?

In general, cheap 3.3v based devices just use disposable 2x AA battery with a reasonably good LDO regulator, as they do not burn a lot of power that 2000mAh can last a long time. For a Bluetooth device, I would just leave the USB features/port/cable off to save on the design cost, and the sanity of DIY folks going cross-eyed trying to get a 0.5mm contact-pitch plug soldered. lol

The IMU chips all have trade-offs, but I usually prefer an i2c chip with interrupt event pin (wake-from-sleep or sample-ready interrupt.) Also, many modern gyro chips have pre-filters built right into the chip itself, and can save a lot of cycles/DSP mcu side.

Not sure about the development state of the ESP32 Bluetooth library, but these chips are generally not known for their power efficiency or accurate a2d functions. If I recall, last time I chose a nordic semiconductor chip because of the power efficiency, and everything else was unavailable.

Best of luck =3

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#74

Post by aphit »

amoshebb wrote: post #35
Cpoll wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced either of those are the lessons. I think the reason for the keyboard's success is that it has a smooth learning curve. A neophyte can hunt-and-peck with a keyboard. Not so with a chorded keyboard.

but then it kinda stops, couldn’t we layer on chords as well, you can peck “t h e” or just mash “eth” and both would result in “the”, or maybe some sort of english pinyin where only the first few chars are needed?

This is precisely what CharaChorder is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CharaChorder

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#75

Post by diggan »

makeset wrote: post #58
nine_k wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature of a chorded mechanical (not on-screen) keyboard for me is that one can use it without having to look at it. To literally touch-type (not necessarily text). This is why such keyboards are used where this advantage is material, e.g. in jet fighters.

You can learn to touch-type on any keyboard and never ever look at it (actually gets confusing to look), and many where you never have to move your hands around either, before you need to get anywhere near chordal.

> (actually gets confusing to look)

As someone who grew up with a Swedish keyboard layout, switched to US when I got a job as a programmer but live in Spain so most keyboards have Spanish physical layouts while I use US software layouts: yes, this is very true for a lot of us :)

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#76

Post by DonHopkins »

neilv wrote: post #34

> Engelbart's demo also featured an input device known as the keyset, but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to catch on. Chording keyboards were popular among the "wearable computing" researchers (who then went on to work on things like Google Glass). For example, the Twiddler. One advantage of them is that you only need one hand to operate it. And some designs mean you can simultaneously hold it with t…

>[...] but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to catch on.

I'm sad that he and others like Ted Nelson and Brett Victor would rightly say that his most important innovations have so far failed to catch on. But there's still time to raise awareness and make them real!

Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg

>Ted Nelson's emotional and moving eulogy for his friend Douglas Engelbart. Given at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, on December 9, 2013.

An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of Tech:

https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/1...

>You don’t need me to tell you that Douglas Engelbart was one of the greatest men of all time. We gather today, in pretense of unanimity and concord, to croon over Doug’s ashes and grab for scraps of his robe.

>Everyone here will of course say they are carrying on his work, by whatever twisted interpretation. I for one carry on his work by keeping the links outside the file, as he did.

>Some are no doubt here to cheer and march behind the mouse, as in the opening of the Mickey Mouse TV Club of yore. Let them be happy in that celebration.

>But the real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration.

>Don’t get me wrong, the people who gave us all those fonts were idealists too, in their way — they just didn’t necessarily hold a very high view of human potential.

>I used to have a high view of human potential. But no one ever had such a soaring view of human potential as Douglas Carl Engelbart — and he gave us wings to soar with him, though his mind flew on ahead, where few could see.

> Like Icarus, he tried to fly too far too fast, and the wings melted off. [...]

Doug and Karen Engelbart marry Marlene and Ted, May 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKFbwLeS1k

>Poignant ceremony with sweet pledges, at the Marin Civic Center. Ann and Bill Duvall are co-celebrants. Underexposed and streaky, but the event is the important thing. (Battery ran out before the final verdict. Other camera was far away.)

A few words on Doug Engelbart:

https://worrydream.com/Engelbart/

>Doug Engelbart died today. His work has always been very difficult for writers to interpret and explain.

>Technology writers, in particular, tend to miss the point miserably, because they see everything as a technology problem. Engelbart devoted his life to a human problem, with technology falling out as part of a solution. When I read tech writers' interviews with Engelbart, I imagine these writers interviewing George Orwell, asking in-depth probing questions about his typewriter.

>Here's the most facile interpretation of Engelbart, splendidly exhibited by this New York Times headline:

>"Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88"

>This is as if you found the person who invented writing, and credited them for inventing the pencil. (This analogy may be more apt than any of us are comfortable with.)

>Then there's the shopping list interpretation:

>His system, called NLS, showed actual instances of, or precursors to, hypertext, shared screen collaboration, multiple windows, on-screen video teleconferencing, and the mouse as an input device.

>These are not true statements. [...]

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#77

Post by nine_k »

makeset wrote: post #58
nine_k wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature of a chorded mechanical (not on-screen) keyboard for me is that one can use it without having to look at it. To literally touch-type (not necessarily text). This is why such keyboards are used where this advantage is material, e.g. in jet fighters.

You can learn to touch-type on any keyboard and never ever look at it (actually gets confusing to look), and many where you never have to move your hands around either, before you need to get anywhere near chordal.

True, especially for ergonomic keyboards.

The upside of a chorded keyboard is that it can input a lot while using just one hand, and can be fixed relative just to that hand (imagine e.g. typing while holding a bike handlebar, or, again, an aircraft control stick). Normal touch-typing requires active use of two hands, and a steady surface.

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#78

Post by mcshicks »

nanna wrote: post #70
GregDavidson wrote: post #51

I regularly use my Twiddler with my Android phone. It allows me to fully operate all the applications I use on my desktop computer, e.g. Emacs. https://www.mytwiddler.com/

Even Emacs? Do say more...

I have a twiddler and tried doing this a long time ago i.e. emacs with a twiddler. For me I really needed to use a sticky cntl and alt key because I just couldn't press the cntl button on the top and chord at the same time. And I couldn't figure out how to make the sticky cntl work on the phone. But that was a very long time ago. Now I just use a mini bt keyboard and termux to run emacsclient over ssh and that's good enough for what I want.

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#79

Post by adminm »

brandonmenc wrote: post #49
adminm wrote: post #48

I'm sure there's a (mythical at the moment) device just waiting to "disrupt they keyboard industry" It's crazy that most of us are effectively using a fancy typewriter. Qwerty layout dates 1874, clocking in at just over 150 years of age.

We already did. It's called the mouse.

You type faster with your mouse than keyboard?

Re: A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset

#80

Post by kragen »

peteforde wrote: post #66
kragen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the diode in this schematic is the wrong way around for a normally open switch: it speeds up the keyrelease event when the switch opens instead of the keypress event when it closes. But I think the 100ms delay Ken mentions was intended for a different purpose: to wait for all the fingers in the character to be detected. I think a much better approach would be to wait for one of the keys to be released bef…

Oh, that (waiting for all fingers to be detected) does indeed change how I would approach the scenario, and blew past me in my initial reading. That all said, even with 100ms cycles I would hardware debounce the inputs, capture the keystrokes with an ISR to set some semaphore variables, and then create a 100ms loop that checks the current value (and resets) those semaphore variables. Eliminating switch bounce allows…

Yeah, the 100ms wait after stability probably avoids any need to debounce. You need to debounce if you want to detect both keypress and keyrelease events reliably, though.

For mass-production products it's cheaper to add 100 lines of code to your firmware than to add a resistor to your PCB, much less a diode, capacitor, and two resistors, but for prototypes and low-volume designs it's less clear.

WRT ISRs, plausibly in this case the microcontroller can just poll instead of using interrupts. You probably don't mean "semaphore"; semaphores are a blocking construct, and if there's one thing you can't do in an ISR, it's block.

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