Hack Chat Transcript, Page 2

deʃhipu 3:39 PM

it would also rexognize your pcbs and project debugging information on them

deʃhipu 3:40 PM

recognize*

Thomas Shaddack 3:40 PM

Yup. Though for that, higher-resolution augmented reality glasses would be better.

Thomas Shaddack 3:40 PM

Circuitboards have lousy and uneven albedo.

deʃhipu 3:40 PM

http://worrydream.com/#!/SeeingSpaces

Thomas Shaddack 3:43 PM

Yup. With a projector, every surface can be an user interface. With a camera-OpenCV-projector, it can even be interactive/adaptive. I thought more about using the keys as a projection surface for adaptive macro keyboards. Or for changing the projected image based on what application is active, for the keyboard shortcuts. A variant on an OLED display in each key.

Thomas Shaddack 3:43 PM

Projected keyboards lack the haptic feedback I consider crucial. (Touchscreens for now as well.)

kristina panos 3:44 PM

Have you seen this? https://hackaday.io/project/192937-a-tile-based-macropad

deʃhipu 3:44 PM

I'm very skeptical about any kind of visual innovations for keyboards, because you are not supposed to be looking at it

kristina panos 3:44 PM

That's a good piont

kristina panos 3:44 PM

point

kelvinA 3:44 PM

kristina panos 3:45 PM

^ changing the tile changes the macro

Thomas Shaddack 3:46 PM

You aren't supposed to look at it when you already memorized it all. Nobody remembers ALL the shortcuts/macros/whatever.

Thomas Shaddack 3:46 PM

Re macropads, something I wrote for using the USB numpads as control pendants for printers/CNC.

Thomas Shaddack 3:47 PM

https://www.improwis.com/projects/sw_kbdassist/

kristina panos 3:48 PM

@Thomas Shaddack Cool!

Thomas Shaddack 3:49 PM

Tile vs macro... thought. Those cheapo resistive touchscreen panels. Draw the user interface on paper. Put the panel over it. Write a definition table of the coordinates of the "buttons".

deʃhipu 3:49 PM

@Thomas Shaddack [citation needed]

Thomas Shaddack 3:49 PM

If we don't want to bother much with code and can take the cost overhead, python on pi zero in usb gadget mode as HID emulation will do.

deʃhipu 3:49 PM

I'm pretty sure I remember all the keycodes my keyboard can send

Thomas Shaddack 3:50 PM

I don't.

deʃhipu 3:50 PM

must be hard to use the computer that way

Thomas Shaddack 3:50 PM

I remember the ones I use often.

deʃhipu 3:50 PM

having to look up things constantly

Thomas Shaddack 3:51 PM

That's the cache memory. What's not in the brain/cache has to be looked up in slower storage.

deʃhipu 3:51 PM

it helps for me that I arranged everything according to a pattern, so I don't have to learn every key separately, there is a logic to where everything is

kristina panos 3:51 PM

Does anyone have an as-yet-unobtained holy grail keyboard?

foamyguy 3:52 PM

Touch panel overlayed on top of a static image on paper is a neat idea Thomas

deʃhipu 3:52 PM

I'm happy with mine, been using it for over a year now

kelvinA 3:52 PM

@kristina panos *cries in project delays*

Thomas Shaddack 3:52 PM

Holy grail... Would an unholy abomination work too?

kristina panos 3:53 PM

@kelvinA You'll get there!

kristina panos 3:53 PM

@Thomas Shaddack oh you bet

deʃhipu 3:53 PM

you get an unholy abomination for free added to pretty much any computer you buy these days

Thomas Shaddack 3:53 PM

That's worse. That's membrane.

kristina panos 3:54 PM

And when it breaks, get one for $3 at Microcenter.

kristina panos 3:54 PM

*another

deʃhipu 3:54 PM

but where do you get new hands when those break?

Thomas Shaddack 3:54 PM

Or use the one you got for free from a friend because the keys polished off the lettering, or the cable chewed.

kristina panos 3:55 PM

Really shouldn't chew on cables

Thomas Shaddack 3:55 PM

Tell it to cats. Or in a specific case a pet rabbit.

kristina panos 3:55 PM

Rabbits might listen better than cats, I'm not sure.

deʃhipu 3:55 PM

increasing the voltage helps in teaching them...

deʃhipu 3:56 PM

I had a guinea pig that liked cables, but once it tried a 220V one, and never chewed a single cable ever since

deʃhipu 3:57 PM

(it survived)

Thomas Shaddack 3:57 PM

"I found that ugly short circuit. Also, I found your hamster."

kelvinA 3:57 PM

deʃhipu 3:57 PM

but it jumped like 20cm into the air

kristina panos 3:57 PM

lol, aww

foamyguy 3:57 PM

Maybe this is how pikachu came to be

Thomas Shaddack 3:57 PM

Now that's a form of aversion therapy!

deʃhipu 3:58 PM

yeah, I feel like keyboards with built-in shocking device could have a lot of innovative uses in the modern age

deʃhipu 3:58 PM

especially on the Internet

kristina panos 3:58 PM

I got you https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/this-negative-reinforcement-keyboard-may-shock-you/

Thomas Shaddack 3:59 PM

Interesting paradigm change. The shocking stuff is usually on the screen.

deʃhipu 3:59 PM

why limit yourself

deʃhipu 3:59 PM

speaking of which, does anybody use pedals?

kristina panos 4:00 PM

I stopped, mostly because I was using one for Shift and it's just weird to go to a coffee shop with a Kinesis *and* a foot pedal.

kelvinA 4:00 PM

I've seen videos of them being mapped to keyboard shortcuts, but I haven't used one.

Thomas Shaddack 4:01 PM

Thought. Integrate the foot pedal into an insole.

kristina panos 4:01 PM

Also it was too loud for even that environment

deʃhipu 4:01 PM

that's loud

Dan Maloney 4:01 PM

@Thomas Shaddack -- Just don't go into a casino with that

foamyguy 4:02 PM

I have a re-occuring sort of "day dream" idea that I've thought about a few times of integrating various buttons into shoes and using them to remotely trigger things for magic tricks.

deʃhipu 4:02 PM

typing socks?

kristina panos 4:02 PM

@Thomas Shaddack I wonder if you could use like velostat and put it in the heel. just bounce your heel

Thomas Shaddack 4:02 PM

Array of thin-film resistive pressure sensors. (Or just one.) Bluetooth. Possibly some vibromotors for feedback. Shoes are underestimated enclosures for electronics.

kristina panos 4:02 PM

@foamyguy I feel like toe shoes that are a little too big for you would work for that

deʃhipu 4:02 PM

you could also make the socks from a bulletproof material, for c++ programming

Thomas Shaddack 4:03 PM

Or do away with the whole mechanical interfacing and use EMG.

Thomas Shaddack 4:03 PM

...and impregnate the socks in DDT powder, to deal with bugs before they set in?

Dan Maloney 4:03 PM

That was my thought -- what's next after keyboards? Or are we always going to apply fingers to keys?

Thomas Shaddack 4:04 PM

We now way too often apply keys to fondleslabs. (Sorry, touchscreens, I dislike you.)

deʃhipu 4:04 PM

I feel like a physical keyboard and a text terminal will always be there for the real hackers

kelvinA 4:04 PM

Well hopefully my future is applying fingers to motorised faders and not keys (or whatever gets me over 300wpm)

deʃhipu 4:04 PM

(tm)

deʃhipu 4:05 PM

@kelvinA have you tried steno?

Thomas Shaddack 4:05 PM

for touchscreens I use messagease keyboard.

Thomas Shaddack 4:05 PM

https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

Thomas Shaddack 4:05 PM

Some learning curve but so very worth it.

kelvinA 4:05 PM

No. I've done the research into Steno and Charachorder and the learning time diminishes the ROI.

deʃhipu 4:06 PM

also, why do you use 300wpm, are you doing live captioning?

kelvinA 4:06 PM

I'm about to try Taipo because the creator could do the monkeytype ASCII mode at 50wpm.

deʃhipu 4:06 PM

s/use/need

deʃhipu 4:07 PM

I noticed that both for programming and for writing articles, the bottleneck is not my typing speed but my thinking speed

Thomas Shaddack 4:07 PM

text terminal, yes. text input, yes. physical keyboard, not necessarily. for now, it is the best choice. but more direct interfacing to muscle signals, motoric nerves, or even the brain itself is where I see the future.

kelvinA 4:08 PM

I write a lot of project logs on hackaday.io for starters and those take hours sometimes. Then I want to quickly create massive to-do lists simply so that my brain doesn't have to dedicate energy to remember what I'm doing next in any project. It's one of those annoying things where, if I don't type it fast enough, I forget and have to spend even longer trying to remember.

deʃhipu 4:08 PM

so the only use case I can think of for 300wpm typing speed is dicatation or retyping of existing printed text

kelvinA 4:09 PM

I feel like it's similar to a tractor. Most people don't have a farm that needs harvesting and so don't need one.

Thomas Shaddack 4:09 PM

Thought. Voice notes. With later speech-to-text.

Thomas Shaddack 4:10 PM

And then there are people who don't need tractors so they think nobody else needs tractors.

kristina panos 4:10 PM

+1 for voice typing. I would not be here today, et cetera.

Dan Maloney 4:10 PM

Can you think at 300 wpm? I doubt I can

kelvinA 4:10 PM

I actually tried Windows 10 speech to text in a log, but unfortunately, after all the edits and adding in symbols, it took about the same time as typing a log normally.

Thomas Shaddack 4:10 PM

Not sustained. Bursts, yes.

kelvinA 4:11 PM

I personally think more in entire sentences

Dan Maloney 4:11 PM

My brain would burst into flames

kelvinA 4:12 PM

Well, think "this is the kind of sentence I want to type"

deʃhipu 4:12 PM

you know this presentation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWyMA_bT7UI

deʃhipu 4:12 PM

thast's how coding with voice can look like

deʃhipu 4:12 PM

but you do need a good microphone

deʃhipu 4:13 PM

and a quiet environment

Thomas Shaddack 4:13 PM

or a mike array and good enough processing.

deʃhipu 4:13 PM

well, he used existing tools

deʃhipu 4:13 PM

you could probably do much better if you coded everything from scratch for that use case

deʃhipu 4:14 PM

it's still much slower than typing

Nicolas Tremblay 4:15 PM

@Dan Maloney time?

Thomas Shaddack 4:15 PM

Microphone arrays are also already existing tools. Small and big. Clean audio signal is an "interface layer", and it doesn't matter if you get it by processing or by manipulating the environment.

Dan Maloney 4:15 PM

OK, it's well past the top of the hour, so we should let everyone else get back to work. Huge thanks to Kristina for coming along today, and to everyone else for exercising their keyboards with us.

Thomas Shaddack 4:15 PM

Work is a four-letter word.

Dan Maloney 4:15 PM

@Nicolas Tremblay - yup, lost track as usual

kristina panos 4:16 PM

Thanks, Dan! Thanks everybody!

Nicolas Tremblay 4:16 PM

@Dan Maloney Everybody did

foamyguy 4:16 PM

Fun chat. Thanks for hanging out folks

Nicolas Tremblay 4:16 PM

@kristina panos Thank you for the chat

Dan Maloney 4:16 PM

No matter what the topic is, always seems to happen

Thomas Shaddack 4:17 PM

Thanks, was fun!

fid 4:17 PM

This is work, or working. I did get sidetracked during a keyboard search. One of the pictures had a Rubik's cube with Calendar stickers on it.

Dan Maloney 4:17 PM

Make sure you come back next week, too:

Dan Maloney 4:17 PM

https://hackaday.io/event/192817-modeling-space-hack-chat

fid 4:17 PM

TTYL

Dan Maloney 4:18 PM

Transcript coming up -- as soon as Tom gets done with the podcast...

fid 4:18 PM

Thanks for the fun hour+

Dan Maloney 4:18 PM

Hack Chat Transcript, Page 1

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