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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."
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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.
A prime idea, that.
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Wow! Looked at the pictures, very attractive!
So, eye-candy aside:
Since all of our jobs are being outsourced to other countries, this keyboard will be perfect for public schools where they will need to teach children to function in the wonderful world of order-taking at fast food restaurants on those nifty little picture-only cash-registers..
It will be handier and handier to have virtual keyboards, and in fact, they obviously already exist.
;)
However, soon enough, as with other inventions, it just may be that we get a glass panel in front of us, and the display/input conforms to the user and his/her function, instead of the other way around.
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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!
Can't wait to watch my favorit divx on the Windoze key !
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Cool, not only could viruses switch what appears on your screen when you type you could also wake up and find a huge picture of goatse on your keyboard.
I'll bet you the latest spyware would get the ability to run banner ads through the keyboard. "Hit the monkey now!"
It looks like most of their portfolio makes it into production, but I can't
help but wonder just how much a keyboard like this would cost?
Also, OLED's have a short life. 1-2 years.
Mirror here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
This is an amazing idea for international users at public terminals. Just sit down and select your character set and you're off and running with a keyboard taylored to your needs. I forsee this being in airports and trainstations; even somewhat computer illiterate people could use it to be able to seemlessly type in there language.
Although the price might render this idea problematic...
But the one that intrigues me the most is the fact that I share a keyboard between a Mac and a PC using Synergy, and the keys aren't mapped identically between both machines. This would be very handy to have my keyboard visually show me what's what, dependant upon which computer has the keyboards focus at that time.
Not to mention that I'm a shortcut junkie, and a visual kinda guy... This has "productivity increase" written all over it!
But the bad news is that the keyboard appears to be just a prototype at this point. Hopefully demand will quickly bring it to market soon! (preferably at less than $200 - It looks kinda expensive). There's a rather good thread on it over at digg, from earlier today.
...could drive the OLEDs. So if I switched from Firefox to OpenOffice the keys would automatically adjust themselves. This way we could leave to the application developers to interface their apps to something in the OS. This would be the future version of creating icons for your application or an extension of it.
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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.
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I can finally get past the second step - I'll have an ANY KEY!
This would have to be ungodly expensive for a keyboard. OLED's are definately the way to go, though, because LCD's (especialy in color) are way to bulky and expensive (each key would need a light source, lcd, and a driver chip). With an OLED, if I am not mistaken, you can have the whole display and drivers on one piece. No glass panels, no backlight.
Still, until OLEDs are in mass (*MASS*) production, I dont see producing a keyboard like this for a reasonable price for some time yet.
For all the people thinking "OH NO! this would be way to confusing! Bad, bad idea for UI design..".. what's the problem? We have windows full of icons now. What's the difference in putting some icons onto a keyboard? With something like photoshop I could see this being a real time saver. And I bet you will start to use and remember keyboard shortcuts much more often with this, since you only need to look, where now you have to hunt around and find out what the shortcut is..
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There really could be an 'Any' key.
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Just get a prepaid credit card from your bank. Get them to input the exact cost of the keyboard, so even if someone steals your CC #, the thing will be empty anyways.
Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
I don't want to dis the (obviously) pretty good designers of Art. Lebedev Studio, but do we have a proof that this is even a prototype? For all I see it may just as well be a great idea with a good design, created in Maya (or whatever). Prety picture != real (or even conceivable) product.
Keyboard design needed something like this for a long time now, but will it ever become a real market product?
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.
Anyway. I've always thought of a musical MIDI keyboard with glowing keys.
:)
Why? You give it the music, and it can teach you to play a specific piece of music. Just put your hands on the glowing keys, and ta-da!
I would think that the new e-paper technologies would be better suited as they maintain the image with the power off. This would enable the keyboard to only use power while the keys are changed (or if they are animated), and of course the wireless portion would use power.
If they get these out on the market (using e-paper tech) for under $300 CAN I would buy one asap.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
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.
Um, nobody claimed it was a product, did you bother to read the post or look past that one page on the website? This is a design concept by a russian company who does industrial design. many of their other design concepts have made it to production.
WoW would be great with this! Chuckled a bit when I saw the "Quake" idea, first thing I thought of was binding the keys to macros on World of Warcraft, this would just be so much better than an action bar and/or remembering what you mapped all your keys to.
I'd definitely pay for this keyboard, even if it were $200+
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?
wonder what the 'feel' is like? that matters.
have to admit, the displays are pretty cool looking, but I'd sure hate to think what happens to it when you spill your coffee into it... ;-)
You could install a keyboard game like Whack-a-mole, and the user unwittingly types in code to destroy their own system.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
That would be really funny if the prompt read, "Press any key" and every key on the keyboard changed to read "Any". :)
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.
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Or, visit a page with a banner, and watch the whole "click the monkey" or "Shoot the duck" bannergame display in your function key row, begging you to hit the right key to win that iPod.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
We just use tiny little slide projectors behind each key. When you hear this sound: "Bink!", go to the next key image.
It costs a fortune changing all those light bulbs though, but it keeps your fingers warm.
For the cheapskates there's always Das Keyboard!!
Well, it isn't exactly cheap, but it is actually really nice. My keyboard at work had one too many coffees spilled on it, so I asked for Das Keyboard for the replacement. I was anticipating a little adjustment period, but there really wasn't any. It takes zero extra effort to type -- my fingers apparently know where all the keys are -- and the weighting and feel of the keys is excellent. The only problem I have is when I'm working on something else and want to reach over to hit a control key combination or something -- then I have to think.
(PS: you can get it directly from its own web site: http://www.daskeyboard.com/ for four cents cheaper than Thinkgeek, and with free shipping to North America.)
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.
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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.
E-Ink may be the only way this concept could be realized at a generally marketable price point--but only when that tech has actually made it to market itself! If this product is actually brought to market within the next 12 months, it will most likely be constructed with a monochrome LCD for each key--not as sexy, but passive-matrix LCDs are almost cheap enough now for this to be feasible.
I would argue that the overlays shown in the Star Trek USS Enterprise Bridge Blueprints (a copy of which I purchased back in Sept '82) says, "Shows Every Button of Every Station and Their Functions: Complete Set of 10 Accurate 17" x 22" Blueprints of the Primary Bridge", (these drawings were drawn by Michael McMaster) could be considered precursors to this. The first set was drawn October 76. The STTNG console, as described by Michael Okuda and Wil Wheaton are a leap of generations past "Trek Classic."
We've already seen in the Trek Episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" a console control station with keyboard and switches being inserted after Lee Kelso appropriated it from the Vega cracking station. Later, that console style was changed for subsequent episodes, and apparently those changes on-screen seem to import/imply multi-function/demand-assignment control buttons. They're not for typing or composing documents, but they serve the purpose of entering single or a string of command sequences.
Now, in terms of recent Trek incarnations, it is plain and obvious that even tho Trek is fiction, it should not take a giant leap to consider that today's thin film and LCD panels *could* make it feasible to lighten up, slim down, and de-wire these control consoles and make them portable. (Even the USN today and for several years has been using Palm Pilots for crew maintenance of shipboard equipment, and their PDAs could surely use the docking cradles/keyboards...)
Where I am going with this is that between Trek of the 60s and technology of today, and with Trek already having mentioned multifunction keyboard overlays in the 60's drawings and the STTNG blueprints reiterating such things, where the consoles bring up the functions appropriate to security clearance, work tasks, emergencies, etc., this keyboard is not SOOOO terribly unique that it would enjoy a monopoly patent. It would probably face competition just as the innumerable PDAs' makers are facing competition, as so many hammers, socks, hair combs, nit removers, and even computer keyboards and other input devices have met competition. In other words, it's not a terribly large leap or extension of logic to say that a large, heavy, box and Mil-Spec connector cabled keyboard could be reduced to a wireless, lit-key, portable (walk-about) entry station, sending and receiving information via laser, Bluetooth or IR or WI-Fi (whatever works for the compartment, based on the proximity of RFI, EMI, generators, transformers, and such, unless the freq is above or below and therefore unaffected) signals. If there is contention or threat of suits in the court, an "innovator" then could simply create sliding tracks so that all those surplus monochrome LCDs languishing at WeirdStuff Computers could be put to use and maybe reopen a LCD assembly line. LCDs would be able to send several lines
I really do think the keyboard concept they show deserves *some* protection, but not at the preclusion or exclusion of other makers. It's not novel *enough*. It's not *non-obvious* enough. But, I would say that any investors who like the technology should at least give first round of financing and marketing assistance to these guys -- if they are truly the first to put in this much real-world effort. But, once their boards hit the streets and engineering bugs crop up, competitors waiting in the background will quickly exploit that.
These guys had better be prepared to fix their own flaws before their competitors fix them for them and help themselves to their competition while they are at it...
Nice board. Really. I just hope they enlist the help of Open Source developers and embed a Linux-kernel driver or module facility so that the user can assign ANY function to ANY key based on a combination of command sequence and mouse click on a feature of an app interface. It is still too hard for some people to dump the console output or even make a console tell them the hex and human string AND the command with an example. Comparing the console output needs to seamlessly and INTUITIVELY match the KDE key settings.
If they bring this board down to $50, I'd buy one, hands down (pun IS intended...)...
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