Tim Gray wrote: > > Only one problem with a chording glove... durability... If I'm going to > wear a glove for 14 hours a day, it will get immersed about 5 times, have > iced tea spilt on it twice, soaked from sweat during my morning run... Wow, I took the wrong week to stop reading this list! (Some work problems got in the way of my "hobby" time - I hate when that happens - anyone want to offer me a job doing wearable/keyboard design F/T? :-) I don't know about "immersed" I have not built mine to do that, I could see it without too much additional weight, I do change diapers and spill things on it, wear it all day, eat with it on and it gets bashed around quite a bit... So, here are a few obervations from a long term modified BAT user. Cost: For a board and cord from bat - aprox $90 then if you want to experiment, you buy some keys of your choice. I have used condictive cloth and other substances, but I have come back to the cherry keys that are used in a BAT with modified springs to soften the kepress. (I spent the $200 for the full bat when I started and seveal hundred over time on different keys and such, but you don't have to!) I/O: Uses AT or PS/2 port only, no software to run. I should clarify that - they have some macro software that loads macros into the BAT, once there they stay there untill you clear them or pop out the back up battery - so you don't need it to be on a dos machine. I do not use the BAT macro software, I just use emacs, that way I get the same macros wherever I am. Wearing all day and Weatherproofing: My current favorite grips are waxed leather. It's skin, I'm skin, we basically like the same environment. I like this as a prototyping material because it works with minimal tools (a knife, some beeswax and an old pot), by it's nature it sheds water and is durable, it works up fast and holds up well. And after daily wear for a year (longest I have gone between design changes) it still smells good (like beeswax). While I would not intensionally submerse my "grip" I do wear it out in all sorts of weather. I also wear it while changing diapers. If you leave it on the dashboard of a car in the summer sun it could be a problem, but even if the wax get's soft it will firm up again when it cools, that is in fact how you do your shaping to get it so it fits the hand realy well. FYI melting point for beeswax is around 140 deg. F. You could raise that with additives. Also, my design rests on the BACK of the hand, palm is open, I find this very comfortable for extended wear (minimizes sweat problems). I say "prototyping" because I still think of it as somthing I am changing and revising. I would expect to get several years of daily use from a keyboard of this type, then perhaps the leather will need "shoring up" - re gluing or some stitching, perhaps re waking in parts that want to flex. In other words, perfect for the do it yourself crowd, not a "for sale" comersial item unless the customer understood. By going to an "hand open" keying position as opposed to the twiddler "hand closed" position I find it is very comfortable and relaxing to use from the time I get up in the morning untill I switch over to the non-hand mounted one that I use at night (same position, nothing over the hand though so I will not get tangled by cords in my sleep). Speed, programing and efficency: My abilities here are different than the norm. I have an impairment that effects my reading and spelling skills. To use a QWERTY keyboard, even after many years of practice, I type relatively slowly if I cannot look at the keyboard (about 10 wpm) and not so fast when I do stare at the keyboard ( 45 - 65 wpm). 2 hours after I got the bat I was outtyping my "not looking" QWERTY speed. One handed BAT while walking to work (city, people I know, making eye contact, saying hello, not walking into cars when crossing the street and using "line echo" - hearing back the line when I hit return) I get about 25 wpm. Which I figure is actually a little over 30 wpm and then time to hear each line. My two bat speed is about my QWERTY speed, with the bonus of not having to look at the keyboard. (With 7 keys you never need to see the bat.) I imagine my 2 bat speed would outstrip my QWERTY speed if I did it more I hope to get the multi cpu to one keyboard switch I need this summer so I can use a dual bat setup more of the time. (My job has me switching between machines a bit many days - some I can do through my wearable thanks to ssh, some I cannot.) Since I need to look at the QWERTY, and not at the BAT I find the BAT better for programming - so I can look at a screen. That is why I do more of my code writing at a desktop not on my wearable, not the keyboard but the screen (my wearable has only speech and a beep for output - well, not counting the hard disk wine...). I find I outline and psudo-code walking around, and "dock" to fill in details, I do write code when walking, and it only forces you to write in small tight self contained units. In a lot of ways, I think it is compairable to only haveing a small screen. I think my code style is tighter for it. (But then I am also glad I leared back in the days of batch and punch cards.) I keep hoping I'll have time to put up some web pages showing constuction for hand grips, but I have not found it, if anyone wants me to talk them through it (voice) let me know and we can arrage a phone call. (Perhaps some kind sole with write it up?) For pictures of some of what I have made, see: http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~priestdo/wearable.pics.html Back to work... Greg -- Greg Priest-DormanNO SOLICITING
From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH)
Maintained by R. Paul McCarty
Archive created with babymail