Topic: Chumby Keyboard

In the Wiki, it says that input systems are eather patented, or too small.

Why not do something similar to a cell phone, yet slightly different

12 buttons.

ABCD|EFGH||1
IJKL |MNOP||2
QRST|UVWX||3
YZ56| 7890||4

Simple to use. The rightmost buttons represent the place, and the others represent the letters.
So to type "hello" you would type:

1,EFGH;2,MNOP;4,IJKL;4,IJKL;2,MNOP;

"1234" could be eather:
1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4
OR
1,1,1,2,1,3,1,4
The second allows for expandability for punctuation.


It is crude, but it may have potential.

Re: Chumby Keyboard

Interesting, but wouldn't "hello" be:

4,EFGH,1,EFGH,4,IJKL,4,IJKL,3,MNOP

...or am I misunderstanding this scheme? My interpretation of your example would be "ENLLN"

And how do I do *two* words - ie. how do I get a space?

Note that for most practical uses, you'd need to support punctuation, lower case, and in some cases extended characters.  The other issue is whether someone could figure this out with no training whatsoever.

Re: Chumby Keyboard

Wow... I feel really stupid.

You were correct, and I made a silly mistake.


Space could possibly be a 13th button at the bottom.
And punctuation could be on the 1/2/3/4 buttons, as annotated.

And this is very crude. I would want to see how big these buttons would be on a screen, and then adjust. If possible, a shift button and a accent button would be nice :-)

4 (edited by zachninme 2006-12-13 15:12:46)

Re: Chumby Keyboard

I re-made the system in a flash file, which I am continually updating Here
It is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! It uses 6 buttons.

You can view the .fla real-time url

The buttons are really huge, easy to press. And there is a uppercase, symbol, and accent section, although the accent section isn't done yet.

EDIT: Shift IS working! I just need to add the accent section, which shouldn't take long!

Re: Chumby Keyboard

Nice!

We'll try this method out on some folks and see how it works for them.

My initial comments:

1) You need a way to change your mind about switching modes.  For instance, once I hit the Shift key, I can't get back to the lower case letters without choosing something.

2) You need a backspace.

3) It's not very clear what's going on in the lower right button in shift mode, although playing with it got me to numbers.

4) It might be nice to hold it in some mode - for instance, people tend to enter numbers in groups.

Cool progress, though!  Keep going!

6 (edited by zachninme 2006-12-13 18:23:01)

Re: Chumby Keyboard

1) The modes loop. So it *should* go plain>SHIFT>#'s>accent>plain>SHIFT...
However, I will apologize on this, as there was a small error, where it said it was in Accent mode, but it was in plain.

2) I added a character "<" on the lower middle button. I tried to make it backspace using:

                textbox = box.text;
                tblen = textbox.length() - 1;
        box.text = textbox.substring(0, tblen);

Where box is the textbox with the writing. It works, but it deletes the whole thing. (it is the current version)

3) If this is used, it would require some basic docs. Very simplistic however. I gave it to 2 of my friends and told them to type in "1*2+3-6=83.2". I did not tell them anything on how to work it.

4)Maybe if you hold down that SHIFT key, then it would stay in that mode?


Updates: A little mishap currently keeps you in your previous mode.
The < in the first mode clears the whole thing.
I picked 36 lettered accents, based on  8-bit ASCII's accented letters. (I did not include the ones with the circle accent, however)

7 (edited by zachninme 2006-12-16 09:06:42)

Re: Chumby Keyboard

I ironed out the mode lock!
I am now working on fixing the backspace :-)

And the backspace now works!
However, in working on that, I found that the modelock created a glitch :-(

Re: Chumby Keyboard

Everything is all nice and working!
Here it is!
Source
Backspace works, and there is the lock, you hold down the lower right button for a second or longer to activate, and then the word "lock" appears.
I am not the nicest programmer, so if anyone sees anything that should be cut, let me know!
I might make it a configuration for a banner or something :-)
(Coming Soon!)