From: Paul Fernhout <pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com>
Eric Armstrong wrote:
> How is it for doing ctrl+key and alt+key sequences?
There a six thumb buttons in the back. One is fot CTRL and one is for
ALT. So these keys are easy to enter. Control ALT is probably more
difficult. I'm not sure it works.
> From your description, it seems that the device would be
> best for doing letter-commands in conjunction with the
> mouse, and small edits where the amount of text is very
> limited.
> That can be A-ok for a lot of work. For example, browsing
> emails. When authoring a response, though, it would seem
> to make sense to grab the keyboard.
True. However, it does exercise a different set of muscles if you use it
in your non dominant hand, so there may be some general value to
potentially useing it to reduce RSI.
On comparing it to guitar use and ergonomics:
I've since found an alternate key mapping someone made which is
optimized for letter usage in English and minimizing finger stress.
http://mevard.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/keyboards.html
For example, with this alternative system, all sequences involve finger
presses in the same column (which is easier). However, I haven't tried
to learn this alternative.
I've noticed that the switches are awkwardly installed. In short, only
one side of them really goes down (like a lever pivoting on the other
side). They are arranged so that the middle two rows have the area to
push next to each other, and the outer rows are pushablwe to the
outside. It would be best if the pushable area for each row was on the
same side. I think this is why the switches seem hard to push in various
situations. If you press them straight on in the middle this isn't as
noticeable.
Working with the Pilot:
I did get the cable built to hook it the twiddler to the Pilot and it
works. Unfortunately, it rapidly drains the pilot battery - in part
because it countinuously send position updates the Pilot doesn't need --
preventing the pilot from "dozing" which is what it normally does most
of the time even when the screen is on to save power. It drained about
1/2 the battery in about an hour of use. So I'm not sure this can be
practically used with the pilot. To create such a system and have it
have maximum battery life probably would require electroinc changes to
the twiddler and Palm device. Note -- this level of power use isn't an
issue for running it with a wearable pentium or such since they have
much higher baseline power draw.
Data gloves:
Even before I bought the twidler I remembered hearing about the glove
idea like what was mentioned by Jim Morrissett and thought of building
one. That seems most ideal -- something that just recognizes gestures or
finger taps. Unfortunately, there are none for sale that I know of (and
probably not for $200 yet.) I even though of making one where you
chorder simply by pressing the tips of fingers to the thumb -- a simple
electrical contact being at the end of each finger. You could enter
4X4=16 choices on each two handed closure, and so two sets of choices
would be 16X16 = 256 choices. You could get fancier with using different
positions on the sides of fingers or palm or differentiating between
input from one hand, the other, or both at once. Making such gloves
would be almost trivial (just wire to foil patches sewn on gloves),
although one would need a PIC or Forth chip to debounce the contacts and
convert the sequences to serial port input.
-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 27 2000 - 17:48:52 PST