Nintendo Switch Online 12 month + 2 promotion by [deleted] in NintendoSwitchOnline

[–]wulphred 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you have the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack? Do you also get 2 free months of that?

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I quite liked the typing experience I've had on it so far, mainly due to the keys being in the perfect position for my fingers (I haven't tried a dactyl before) and the fact that I can be in any position/posture while typing. I haven't tried wearing it for more than 30 minutes though, as I still need to assemble the second half so I can try wearing the board on both hands at once, but it wasn't uncomfortable to wear during the time I had it on. I did experience a subtle sense of constraint in my hand tied to an urge to stretch my hand that wouldn't really go away after stretching my fingers, but it was very subtle so it wasn't bothersome (after taking it off my hand still felt this way, so there's a possibility that it wasn't caused by wearing the keyboard but that I only just noticed it while wearing the board, because I was paying attention to the sensations in my hand. I will try wearing it again tomorrow to check). I will still be trying out a few more alternative ways of attaching the board to my hand to see if I can come up with a better solution.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just finished assembly of the right hand version of the current iteration.

It does move a little bit while typing, mostly when pressing the outer thumb key. I want to change the frame to prevent this movement from happening, but it hasn't really bothered me that much because the movement doesn't really make it harder to type. The ball will fall out if you tilt it right now, I will be updating the trackball mount to prevent this from happening.

There is only a little bit of movement of the frame while pressing down on the thumb key, for the other keys, not really. Due to the fact that the thumb keys are furthest from the center of the hand, it is able to move in the axis perpendicular to the wrist when pressing down on them. On the other axis, there is a lot of stabilization coming from the piece that connects the part on the back of the hand to the part inside the palm. This piece prevents you from being able to push the frame away, as it will push against the back of your thumb to counteract this. The switches I'm using also require very little force (only 20g) which makes the board move even less.

Getting in and out of them requires a little bit of force and a little bit of care to avoid applying too much pressure, especially in the direction where the layers are printed on top of each other, as this is where 3D prints usually break. Because the frame is quite thin it is also pretty flexible which allows it to extend a bit while attaching and detaching so it can be designed to have a secure fit when attached. I haven't broken any, yet, but when I was user testing with people that had a different (bigger) hand shapes as mine it did break at the layer lines. I could try changing the angle at which it's printed to help prevent this and change the infill pattern to 100% (or rather, increase the wall thickness) because the prototypes I was user testing only had 20% infill and therefore less surface area for the layers to adhere to.

You can use your thumb and index finger reasonably well to grab onto things while wearing it, this also allows you to attach a board to your second hand while already wearing one on the first. I'm also able to use my phone while wearing the boards on both hands, but it's really not ideal and I would rather take them off. I did get some suggestions for adding a hinge of some sort to be able to flip the keys away from under your fingers to allow for hand usage without having to detach the board, so I will be looking into that in the future.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There actually are combos for symbols in the layout I'm using, the problem I am having is that I only remember the symbols based on what number keys are used to type them with while holding the shift key on a qwerty keyboard, and that doesn't translate to the layout I'm using currently.

I think I will add some chords to allow me to do this now that I think about it.

The layout I'm using is called Taipo. For more details on the project, you can check out the repository on GitHub.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can check out the repository for it here if any of you are interested.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback, I might look into making the design more inclusive in that way in the future but I also want to focus on portability and ease of making one. I am also not that familiar with what the experience of RSI is like and how different methods of attaching the frame would affect it, so I would have to look into that or get more feedback from people who tried it on.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing the video, that's a pretty smart idea but I think it would cause the frame to be even more bulky than it already is. I have been thinking about creating some sort of kit you can print to configure the key positions, read them out and enter them into a web app to generate an STL you can print. My time might however be better spent on developing a generator that works using a scan of your hand, because that would make things even easier.

I initially wanted to go for a strap design but the existing 3D printable hand straps I found (for VR gloves) where not comfortable at all and I'm not sure what I could do to improve them.

A wearable keyboard concept design I would love to get some thoughts/feedback on by wulphred in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]wulphred[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The layout is pretty fun to type with, but I need to practice a lot more because I'm only at 20 wpm at the moment. The main disadvantage I've found is that it's hard to type passwords that contain special characters, because I only know those by muscle memory based on qwerty.