Return to the archive index

Re: Homebrew keyboard interface

On Sat, 21 Feb 1998  wrote:

> The approach I took was to use force-sensing resistors (Interlink
> Technologies) embedded in a very light glove's fingertips.  These
> come in a variety of sizes; the ones I have are about 1/4" circles

	I personally discarded the idea of a force-sensor as I prefer a
tactile feedback to a button-push.  May be worth a try, though - as you
could 'type' on any surface.  Plus it would be much less obtrusive than
even small buttons.

> run them up to a heavily modified watch.  The watch's buttons would
> be overridden such that you could hit one button to 'activate typing'
> and another button to 'stop typing'.  An 8k chunk of RAM would save
> the typing until you got somewhere to download the info.  The watch
> would also serve as a 4-character editing buffer so you could
> correct mistakes you knew you made.

	Interesting idea - though it may be easier to have some other kind
of easily-accessible way to activate and de-activate the glove.  One of
the strengths of this design vs. a twiddler (besides cost) was that it has
to be faster/easier to enable/disable than it is to pull out/put away a
twiddler.

> 1.  Even very light gloves don't bear a lot of wear.  We're used to
> having completely free fingers, especially around the side of each
> finger, when we try dexterity tasks.

	Something that was suggested was to use finger-less gloves, like
driving gloves.  I think this is a Good Idea(tm), as you'd get better
traction on the buttons with fingertips as opposed to fabic-covered
fingertips.  It's an idea worth testing, I think.  I hadn't realized the
importance of keeping the sides of the fingers clear.

> 2.  Wiring.  10 wires doesn't sound like a lot, but it is, on your hand.

	Well, I think it could be made unobtrusive.  (ie a small ribbon
cable flattened on the back of the hand)  I don't think it would be too
big of a problem.  With colors to match the glove, or putting the cable
under the fabric, it should be OK.

| Donald Papp
|  

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH)
Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

Archive created with babymail