Slashdot Mirror
Optimus Keyboard With OLED Display Keys
Koskun writes "What appears to be a Russian design company has on their website a keyboard in which the keys are using OLED to display what function the keys represent. The product is Art. Lebedev Studio's Optimus Keyboard. The uses of this could be amazing. They have pictures of layouts for Photoshop and Quake, as well as a QWERTY and Russian. Here's hoping that this will make it to a production model and not just a design model."
Coral Cache Link
It's not even a "design model". It's a "rendered model". Sweet concept. You'd spend a bloody fortune on 116 individual color OLED displays - in several sizes - and all the circuitry, interfacing, and drivers to run them. I see that they are Macintosh fans, though.
But seriously this technology could have huge implications for the future of peripheral manufacturing (on the high-end at least) purely because you can have it as QWERTY, AZERTY, DVORAK or any other english, arabic, cyrillic, sanscrit, klingon or other layout!
For the cheapskates there's always Das Keyboard!
How this thing won't have a manufacturing cost around $3-4 a key...
That said... If they build these and they have good action, I'll drop $500 on one.
I didnt see anything about purchase information.
If you ask me, I prefer the good old fashion keyboards with no special buttons, lights, whistles or what-not. Those keyboards seem like they would be fun until the lights stop working.
Voice your opinion!
I sure hope the patent applies only to high-resolution or color displays inside the keyboard, as many Slashdot users have "published" (in patent jargon) a description of a reconfigurable keyboard with a small (e.g. 8x8 pixel) monochrome LCD under each key.
Evidently in terms of mouse design, they learned nothing from apple's hockey-puck mouses that shipped with the original Imacs...
Just one word for these guys: Ergonomics
This looks like a very, very cool idea. However, I have a major concern that would need to be satisfied before I would buy one: Drivers.
I'm a dedicated Linux user and I think that the complexity of the drivers required for a keyboard like this might mean that a Linux driver doesn't appear right away (I mean, what are the chances of them releasing one, and we all know how long it takes for community-started open-source drivers to become stable, although they're quicker now than ever). Also, that driver had better not put any load on my CPU or memory. I have better things to do with those.
That said, when an open-source driver for it does emerge, you know it'll do all sorts of cool stuff. For those of us who don't need to look at the keys anyway, it could be programmed to show movies while I'm typing instead.
That's got to be the widest 'standard' keyboard I've ever seen in my life! Where will our obsession with function keys end? First the PC/XT layout put them on the left-hand side, then the AT layout put them along the top.
This keyboard combines the two, so now we've got function keys across the top and (different ones) down the left, plus a numeric keypad that is completely redundant with other number and arrow keys.
Where will it end? Will we someday be pair programming with both programmers working the keyboard and telling each other which keys to hit? Will fights break out over who gets to press 'Y' and 'B'?
I'm sure there are children whose arms won't reach both ends of this thing! Won't someone please think of the children?
How completely useless for us touch typists.
Also, if you need to look down to see what key does what in an FPS game (Quake (III?) is depicted) you're already dead.
Question everything
I think e-ink would be a cheaper, less power-hungry option for the keys. Also, making the keys contoured would be a good idea.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Not terribly practical, though, even if they put it into production.
How many times did you look at your keyboard while you typed your post, really? In the middle of an intense FPS shootout, do you really need to know which key you configured to switch from the rocket launcher to grenades? Do you really have to check the keyboard shortcut for "Copy" in your text editor of choice?
No, me neither.
This is a fun idea, sure, and might have some genuine use in a few niches, but I doubt it's going anywhere as a mainstream idea.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You even rip off the MS menu keys on your work PC?
Damn right I do!
That gap between Alt and Ctrl was left there for a reason. I HATE it when my pinky is a little to the left or right of where it should be, and the result is that Windows steals away focus from whatever window I'm using and gives it to the Start menu.
This infringes on my pending patent of using light in the form of various colors and shapes to identify differing information! I see a world where people use light to represent letters, numbers, and even images. Just in case this patent doesn't succeed, I better submit a secondary one that adds, on the internet.
Everyone thinks that this would be expensice. but does anyone out here actually know what OLED prices are for something like this?
If it's feasible to integrate the OLED and the display driver using all organic semiconductors, maybe this isn't as expensive an idea as people think. The first screens don't necessarily have to have super fast refresh rates.
After all, most of the tiny screens are identical, and my best guess is that OLED production costs go as the area of the screen, which isn't really that large in this case. If one manages to combine the push signal, display signal and the OLED power in two wires, the wiring wouldn't be much more complex than a standard keyboard.
This would be great for Reason, or Fruity Loops, or Hydrogen, or whatever music program you use. The keys could be colored like a piano keyboard. That would alleviate the need for a bulky MIDI keyboard.
I've had this idea before (key's w/ LCD screens) but I never thought it practical enough to work. Now that they've got a Patent pending, I'm kicking myself.
http://ablegray.com
Actually, your presumption is wrong. Almost everyone glances down at their keyboard to get their bearings dozens of times per hour. Yes, sometimes even when they hit something so common as ^V. This is why keyboards are printed with large capital letters in very clear type.
Why don't you try putting little stickers over the letters on your keyboard some time and see just how often you use them as a crutch? You don't even have to cover all the letters; just do ten or fifteen--say, the entire bottom row. You will be surprised at how much you rely on them.