Learning about this for the first time, do you use the TapXR or the Tap Strap? Are there any tasks you do/not use it for, or environments where it functions better or worse? Can it work single hand or with both hands (and a second device)?
I have both, they work pretty well, TapXR looks nicer but has one drawback: doesn't do very well in low light conditions and doesn't work at all in the dark; the old Strap doesn't have this problem, its only drawbacks are the extra seconds it takes to wear it and the weirder aesthetics.
I've only used them as keyboards, so I'm not very familiar with the media controller options, but as far as I can see it's a very easy mode to use.
You can use two of them at the same time, one in each hand, but it probably won't be necessary, you can get to type very fast with one hand.
They are very well supported on iOS. I once plugged one into Windows and it seemed to work fine, but I have not tested it extensively.
That’s interesting, thanks. I a word and meant to ask which you use more, oops. The strap says that it works better on hard surfaces which makes me wonder about how it fares on say, a leg, stiff cushion, or things like that. Also if it’s not using an optical sensor, I wonder what happens when you try playing an instrument with it on. Might have to give it a try.
In "keyboard" mode, you need something to tap on, but it can be the mousepad on your desk, your opposite arm, the underside of your dining room table, the side of your thigh while walking, the handlebars of your bike, etc.
There are also "air gestures" (Smart TV control, air mouse, and media control modes) that don't require a surface. (By the way, there are recent updates in this department that leave out the Tap Strap).
I'm not into gaming, VR sets or the like at all, so I can't say how good or bad these are for that sort of thing, but that market seems to be the main focus and direction the company is taking these days.
Watched the video and super excited to see where tech like this ends up in a few years. Was on the quest to find a split keyboard last week and ran across this. Ended up with a UHK, but man I thought hard about buying one (pair) of these. I was just worried about dust, dirt and overall longevity. Seems like something that would need to be worked on every month or two. The kit is reasonable and might be a fun (next) project.
Would be interested to hear about anyone's experience that owns one of these. How do they hold up? How long did it take to get used to using? Would you recommend to a friend?
I'm not aware of any production version of Chordite (that this design is based on) as of now; but in the wider family of chorded keyboards, the one with a production version that I'm aware of is the Twiddler.
I was going to say I have a old twiddler 2 (wired usb). There was this program I used to learn called "twidor" that was like a type tutor but had graphic that showed you the chords. Really helpful. I didn't see anything like that in the github repository linked in the video. I guess they are up to twiddler 4 now. I read the linked chordite page and I agree that a problem with the twiddler is you are kind of trying to hold the thing steady so you can chord with the same fingers you chording with.
I don't have a program at the moment. The layout I currently use is in the codebase, starts here: https://github.com/akavel/clawtype/blob/96980f68427eb1089112... Personally, I just edited this layout description into a more compact form and printed it on a sheet of A4 paper as a cheatsheet. I do intend to make this aspect more scriptable, but didn't get to it yet.
For learning, I personally just try to slowly code simple hobby things in vim, with the cheatsheet in the other hand... I tried to make the layout relatively intuitive wherever I could. I also patiently went through all the possible combinations of presses, and tried to group them into categories of easy<->medium<->hard<->impossible, then tried to put esp. the more frequently used keys on the easier combinations/chords.
This is awesome! Is there any support beyond the wrist, or how resistive is it when you press the buttons? Have you considered 2 hands too? Do you feel like you've maxed out the number of comfortably reachable keys? I guess you can't have keys off to the side since you can't move your hand relative to the keyboard. Does the thumb do anything currently?
I'm in this niche market too... although I don't really have an immediate use case beyond someday being more portable. Also had some issues with XR glasses and fov being reduced further by eye-glass distance.
No more physical support for the hand than what's seen in the vid. You can check more info in the github repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) and on printables (https://www.printables.com/model/1231156-clawtype). The strap and the plate under the wrist seem enough that I'm not looking to improve on that at the moment; but I still need to test this version on some longer usage sessions. Interestingly, the original inventor and patent owner (https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c...) has a design that doesn't even use a strap, but I didn't explore this direction yet (and honestly not yet even sure how to crack it). I know of another designer who's trying to iterate in that space: http://blog.russnelson.com/chordite
As to resistance, there's a balance to be adjusted between having the buttons too easy or to hard. This seems in main part to need to be adjusted by their positioning though. If too easy, you'll press combinations/chords accidentally too often. If too hard, it gets tiresome and annoying. Maybe there's some better placement possible, haven't found it yet. The switches currently used are Alps; they have dimensions which make them a good fit for this particular design; Cherry MX are a tiny bit too big and would require some rethinking.
As to 2 hands, the whole point for me is to have my main (right) hand available for other use, like drinking water, or otherwise supporting myself in the physical environment around. So I'm not currently interested in two-handed.
As to the number of keys - the four fingers seem busy enough; on the other hand, if you could fit smaller switches around (as in the DataHand design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand - see also 3d-printed clones on the internet - _edit:_ e.g. the https://svalboard.com, as mentioned by someone else, and lalboard https://hackaday.io/project/178232-lalboard-ergonomic-keyboa... as respectfully linked from therein), maybe you could try working with that. The obvious extra possibility is the thumb as you mention - it does feel like something could be added there, though it also sometimes helps a bit in holding the device. The original Chordite designer managed to somehow do it without a strap, but his reasons to not use the thumb are somewhat confusing to me.
I doubt there was a direct inspiration in either direction beside contributing to overall pool of ideas around wearable input devices. Only commonality I see is that they are both handheld/glove like computer input devices. Nerds and sci-fi authors have been dreaming about stuff like that since the beginning of personal computers in ~1970s-1980s if not earlier. There are plenty of other examples which could have been inspiration. Even the 2000 patent, references dozen older patents for handheld or glove like input devices some of which are much closer to the 2006 movie.
Looking at the history of wearable electronics can't forget about Steve Mann and all his crazy prototypes long before 2000.
Most well known movie examples are probably Minority report(2002) and The Wizard(1989) which showed Nintendo power glove.
Which part specifically are you asking about? To summarize as of now:
- the code in the repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) is under AGPL-v3, so you're totally fine to iterate on this part, as long as you keep the license and it terms - which means you should be able to sell it all fine, just also providing users the iterated code, so they can further iterate on their own;
- the 3d-printed parts & structure design (https://www.printables.com/model/1231156-clawtype) is CC BY-NC-SA, so you can iterate on that part as long as you keep those terms - let me know (https://merveilles.town/@akavel/) if you want to negotiate the terms with the designer, or just reach out to him by yourself;
- in the US, some aspects of the design are covered by A PATENT by the original inventor & designer John W. McKown, as explained on the original Chordite page: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c... with an exception for personal use - the patent is http://www.google.com/patents/US6429854 - though IIUC the google page seems to claim it's expired, whatever this means in the legal system, and google claim IANAL on the page too.
- or do you mean some other aspect?
It's too late now, but you have to hit enter twice to insert line breaks.
- the code in the repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) is under AGPL-v3, so you're totally fine to iterate on this part, as long as you keep the license and it terms
- which means you should be able to sell it all fine, just also providing users the iterated code, so they can further iterate on their own;
- let me know (https://merveilles.town/@akavel/) if you want to negotiate the terms with the designer, or just reach out to him by yourself;
- in the US, some aspects of the design are covered by A PATENT by the original inventor & designer John W. McKown, as explained on the original Chordite page: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c... with an exception for personal use
An alternative one-handed keyboard design I like is the half keyboard by Edgar Matias. Personally I am not sure which one is better for typing half-dvorak or half-qwerty.
I used autohotkey for about half a year when I injured my shoulder. With the time to practice I got most of the way back to my typing speed with one hand. It’s really a viable solution that wasn’t too hard to learn.
I'm an early adopter and long time user of the Tap Strap [1] and the TapXR [2], they solved for me the same OP's aspirations ;)
There is some room for improvement, but it really works, flawlessly [3].
[1] https://www.tapwithus.com/how-tapxr-works/
[2] https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-xr/
[3] https://www.tapwithus.com/how-tapxr-works/
Learning about this for the first time, do you use the TapXR or the Tap Strap? Are there any tasks you do/not use it for, or environments where it functions better or worse? Can it work single hand or with both hands (and a second device)?
I have both, they work pretty well, TapXR looks nicer but has one drawback: doesn't do very well in low light conditions and doesn't work at all in the dark; the old Strap doesn't have this problem, its only drawbacks are the extra seconds it takes to wear it and the weirder aesthetics.
I've only used them as keyboards, so I'm not very familiar with the media controller options, but as far as I can see it's a very easy mode to use.
You can use two of them at the same time, one in each hand, but it probably won't be necessary, you can get to type very fast with one hand.
They are very well supported on iOS. I once plugged one into Windows and it seemed to work fine, but I have not tested it extensively.
That’s interesting, thanks. I a word and meant to ask which you use more, oops. The strap says that it works better on hard surfaces which makes me wonder about how it fares on say, a leg, stiff cushion, or things like that. Also if it’s not using an optical sensor, I wonder what happens when you try playing an instrument with it on. Might have to give it a try.
The TapXR I use the most ;)
Those require a surface to type, right?
In "keyboard" mode, you need something to tap on, but it can be the mousepad on your desk, your opposite arm, the underside of your dining room table, the side of your thigh while walking, the handlebars of your bike, etc.
There are also "air gestures" (Smart TV control, air mouse, and media control modes) that don't require a surface. (By the way, there are recent updates in this department that leave out the Tap Strap).
I'm not into gaming, VR sets or the like at all, so I can't say how good or bad these are for that sort of thing, but that market seems to be the main focus and direction the company is taking these days.
I'm not a hardware tinkerer - but if there was a production version of this, I would buy it. But I guess I'm a niche market.
Watched the video and super excited to see where tech like this ends up in a few years. Was on the quest to find a split keyboard last week and ran across this. Ended up with a UHK, but man I thought hard about buying one (pair) of these. I was just worried about dust, dirt and overall longevity. Seems like something that would need to be worked on every month or two. The kit is reasonable and might be a fun (next) project.
https://svalboard.com/
Would be interested to hear about anyone's experience that owns one of these. How do they hold up? How long did it take to get used to using? Would you recommend to a friend?
I'm not aware of any production version of Chordite (that this design is based on) as of now; but in the wider family of chorded keyboards, the one with a production version that I'm aware of is the Twiddler.
I was going to say I have a old twiddler 2 (wired usb). There was this program I used to learn called "twidor" that was like a type tutor but had graphic that showed you the chords. Really helpful. I didn't see anything like that in the github repository linked in the video. I guess they are up to twiddler 4 now. I read the linked chordite page and I agree that a problem with the twiddler is you are kind of trying to hold the thing steady so you can chord with the same fingers you chording with.
https://wearables.cc.gatech.edu/projects/twidor/screens.html
I don't have a program at the moment. The layout I currently use is in the codebase, starts here: https://github.com/akavel/clawtype/blob/96980f68427eb1089112... Personally, I just edited this layout description into a more compact form and printed it on a sheet of A4 paper as a cheatsheet. I do intend to make this aspect more scriptable, but didn't get to it yet.
For learning, I personally just try to slowly code simple hobby things in vim, with the cheatsheet in the other hand... I tried to make the layout relatively intuitive wherever I could. I also patiently went through all the possible combinations of presses, and tried to group them into categories of easy<->medium<->hard<->impossible, then tried to put esp. the more frequently used keys on the easier combinations/chords.
Other one-handed keyboards with different input methods. All sorts of interesting custom keyboards as well.
https://kbd.news/tag/one-handed/
This is awesome! Is there any support beyond the wrist, or how resistive is it when you press the buttons? Have you considered 2 hands too? Do you feel like you've maxed out the number of comfortably reachable keys? I guess you can't have keys off to the side since you can't move your hand relative to the keyboard. Does the thumb do anything currently?
I'm in this niche market too... although I don't really have an immediate use case beyond someday being more portable. Also had some issues with XR glasses and fov being reduced further by eye-glass distance.
No more physical support for the hand than what's seen in the vid. You can check more info in the github repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) and on printables (https://www.printables.com/model/1231156-clawtype). The strap and the plate under the wrist seem enough that I'm not looking to improve on that at the moment; but I still need to test this version on some longer usage sessions. Interestingly, the original inventor and patent owner (https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c...) has a design that doesn't even use a strap, but I didn't explore this direction yet (and honestly not yet even sure how to crack it). I know of another designer who's trying to iterate in that space: http://blog.russnelson.com/chordite
As to resistance, there's a balance to be adjusted between having the buttons too easy or to hard. This seems in main part to need to be adjusted by their positioning though. If too easy, you'll press combinations/chords accidentally too often. If too hard, it gets tiresome and annoying. Maybe there's some better placement possible, haven't found it yet. The switches currently used are Alps; they have dimensions which make them a good fit for this particular design; Cherry MX are a tiny bit too big and would require some rethinking.
As to 2 hands, the whole point for me is to have my main (right) hand available for other use, like drinking water, or otherwise supporting myself in the physical environment around. So I'm not currently interested in two-handed.
As to the number of keys - the four fingers seem busy enough; on the other hand, if you could fit smaller switches around (as in the DataHand design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand - see also 3d-printed clones on the internet - _edit:_ e.g. the https://svalboard.com, as mentioned by someone else, and lalboard https://hackaday.io/project/178232-lalboard-ergonomic-keyboa... as respectfully linked from therein), maybe you could try working with that. The obvious extra possibility is the thumb as you mention - it does feel like something could be added there, though it also sometimes helps a bit in holding the device. The original Chordite designer managed to somehow do it without a strap, but his reasons to not use the thumb are somewhat confusing to me.
Is this by chance inspired by the one handed keyboard from Children of Men?
https://youtu.be/sJO0n6kvPRU at around 2:05
One of my favorite scenes, by the way.
The patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6429854) was filed in 2000, and the movie seems to be from 2006, so possibly it was actually the other way around?
I doubt there was a direct inspiration in either direction beside contributing to overall pool of ideas around wearable input devices. Only commonality I see is that they are both handheld/glove like computer input devices. Nerds and sci-fi authors have been dreaming about stuff like that since the beginning of personal computers in ~1970s-1980s if not earlier. There are plenty of other examples which could have been inspiration. Even the 2000 patent, references dozen older patents for handheld or glove like input devices some of which are much closer to the 2006 movie.
Looking at the history of wearable electronics can't forget about Steve Mann and all his crazy prototypes long before 2000.
Most well known movie examples are probably Minority report(2002) and The Wizard(1989) which showed Nintendo power glove.
The history of that base design goes back to the 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyer#Computer_interface_keyer...
This would be good for trying to get something done on the computer while managing a toddler
This is really cool, is it OK if we iterate on the design?
Which part specifically are you asking about? To summarize as of now:
- the code in the repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) is under AGPL-v3, so you're totally fine to iterate on this part, as long as you keep the license and it terms - which means you should be able to sell it all fine, just also providing users the iterated code, so they can further iterate on their own; - the 3d-printed parts & structure design (https://www.printables.com/model/1231156-clawtype) is CC BY-NC-SA, so you can iterate on that part as long as you keep those terms - let me know (https://merveilles.town/@akavel/) if you want to negotiate the terms with the designer, or just reach out to him by yourself; - in the US, some aspects of the design are covered by A PATENT by the original inventor & designer John W. McKown, as explained on the original Chordite page: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c... with an exception for personal use - the patent is http://www.google.com/patents/US6429854 - though IIUC the google page seems to claim it's expired, whatever this means in the legal system, and google claim IANAL on the page too. - or do you mean some other aspect?
It's too late now, but you have to hit enter twice to insert line breaks.
- the code in the repo (https://github.com/akavel/clawtype) is under AGPL-v3, so you're totally fine to iterate on this part, as long as you keep the license and it terms
- which means you should be able to sell it all fine, just also providing users the iterated code, so they can further iterate on their own;
- the 3d-printed parts & structure design (https://www.printables.com/model/1231156-clawtype) is CC BY-NC-SA, so you can iterate on that part as long as you keep those terms
- let me know (https://merveilles.town/@akavel/) if you want to negotiate the terms with the designer, or just reach out to him by yourself;
- in the US, some aspects of the design are covered by A PATENT by the original inventor & designer John W. McKown, as explained on the original Chordite page: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c... with an exception for personal use
- the patent is http://www.google.com/patents/US6429854
- though IIUC the google page seems to claim it's expired, whatever this means in the legal system, and google claim IANAL on the page too.
- or do you mean some other aspect?
An alternative one-handed keyboard design I like is the half keyboard by Edgar Matias. Personally I am not sure which one is better for typing half-dvorak or half-qwerty.
http://edgarmatias.com/papers/hci96/ https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/1257-half-qwerty-one-...
I used autohotkey for about half a year when I injured my shoulder. With the time to practice I got most of the way back to my typing speed with one hand. It’s really a viable solution that wasn’t too hard to learn.
It's not wearable though, no? or is it?
one could use l||r half of ergodox style keyboard and strap it with velcro to your trousers or jacket