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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.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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.
libertarianswag.com
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!
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
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.
I didnt see anything about purchase information.
I can finally get past the second step - I'll have an ANY KEY!
There really could be an 'Any' key.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
(for me), Is it reasonably quiet?
All quiet keyboards I've ever had always turned out to be utter crap. Right now, I'm banging away on a IBM Modem M keyboard that is still doing fine after years of typing (obviously) but also coffee spilling (hot and cold), heavy banging, hurling across the room, and sitting on. Some of the heavily used keys are so worn out that the plastic surface feels smooth and the etching has gone, but it's still doing fine. These things sure were made to last.
I've long since forgotten about the incredible racket noises it makes. My cat loves the feel and clicks when he stretches on it though, apparently.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
> last, but for me most importantly, are the pretty pictures on the left-hand column of keys configurable?
... wow.
No. After all, the whole point of a super-expensive keyboard with keys that can dynamically change their labels is to hardwire their function in. It was just cheaper to use an OLED display than to silkscreen them on.
You even rip off the MS menu keys on your work PC? Just
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
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.
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?
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.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
like this? it's been around for a few years. there's even a guitar version. you don't really need the complexity of OLED displays for this purpose.
09
I beg to differ that this is not practical. This would be especially useful to video editors or anyone in media that uses a shit-ton of keyboard hotkeys/shortcuts. Take video for example... Avid and FCP keyboards are all over the place. Imagine having a kayboard like this which avid or fcp could send the user's keyboard layout to, and presto! Instant, accurate representation of all the keyboard short-cuts. This is far better than buying a pre-manufactured keyboard that has the shortcuts printed on the keys... especially if you change the layout (as many do on avid and fcp and many other programs).
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
What about multilanguage keyboards?
Not everyone uses the Roman Alphanumerics system. Arabic and Asian languages come to mind.
Plus, it would be cool to see what keys are mapped in games like the old school MechWarrior where you had to use pretty much every key.
Live forever, or die trying.
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.
Ask Logitech and Microsoft. They seem to think that the F-keys are a playground. Thus, odd-shaped F-keys, tiny F-keys, and the ever-dreaded F-Lock, which leaves unsuspecting users wondering why F7 didn't send "Ready!" over the team channel.
They think users are so stupid and/or lazy, that they need a button on the keyboard to launch Excel, regardless of the number of start menu/quick launch/desktop shortcuts Office places on install. Meanwhile, those of us with 1/16 of a clue are left double-checking the F-Lock LED all the time, because we'd rather get into the BIOS setup than try to launch Outlook Express before the bloody boot loader is read off the hard drive!
Can you tell this is a pet peeve? My pre-F-Lock Logitech keyboard is becoming more precious by the minute. I'll be damned if I let these marketing-addled fools turn my Step Into Function debugger key into a PowerPoint launcher.
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The BBC Micro had injection moulded keys with the glyphs running right through the key. After ten years the keys were smooth but still as legible as the day it was bought. A lovely keyboard.
When I saw this, the first thing I thought of was the Internet cafe I sat at near Place de Bastille in Paris. It took me a long time to write the simple email I needed to get off because I had no clue where the keys were on a French Keyboard. It occasionally did some strange stuff. Touch typing is out too! Something like this where a single button on the side could change the keyboard to several languages would be great even in the states where English really isn't the only language spoken (even though we tend to think so).
Hell, the computer labs in school could use this for French, Spanish and other language labs. You know how hard it is to write a French paper without easy access to a cedilla or other diacritic marks?
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
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.
Nothing like thinking completely within the box. Free your mind, my friend.
How about an application that changes your keyboard functions as you proceed through steps? For instance, using an IDE, different key functions would show when I'm editing or debugging.
What if you had toggle keys that, when pressed, the keyboard would show you a visual indication of a completely different set of key-functions? So your keyboard is in its normal state most of the time, but gives you alternate setups as you request them.
What if in games, when you get shot, your keyboard pulses red. When you swim, your keyboard looks like water, with bubbles floating past. Keys show pictures of the weapons they would switch you to, and how much ammo they hold. Keys show the spells they would cast.
What if applications and desktops could now eliminate widgets because a key can be set to represent them as needed? No more row of buttons at the top of every web browser, word processor, and email client. Perhaps they could add a row of keys along the top of the keyboard to replace the window taskbar. These buttons would show your apps, and you could press them to minimize windows, restore them, or bring them to the front.
Or, we could just keep thinking in the box, poo-pooing ideas, and leave the innovation to others.