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Optimus Mini Three OLED keyboard reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-thats-a-let-down dept.

Robbedoeske writes "The first Optimums Mini Three keyboards have been shipped to Holland and Tweakers.net managed to lay hands on one of them to review this precious gem." Apparently the drivers crash a lot, consume way to much CPU, the device is capable of only 3 frames per second, and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device. And with a price tag of over $100, I'm scared to imagine what the price of a full keyboard will actually be should it ever actually ship. But it still would be neat.

2 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. dude.... virtual desktops! by nagashi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine being able to use those to switch virtual desktops, and having an image of the virtual desktop on those keys! =O As a bonus side effect, that'll clear up a bit of room on the taskbar, which is a pretty big deal for me. I prefer to have as much room on my taskbar devoted to tasks and not other misc stuffs such as applets, a gigantic clock, or thumbnails of each desktop. I'm seriously getting twitchy about the prospect of this xDD

  2. Got one, been a bit disappointed. by XMunkki · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bought one for the gadget-nerdiness-factor (about 8 months ago :). Now about a month ago they gave away the software + programming APIs. I was kinda disappointed at the spot, since this is not really a USB device. Inside, it uses an USB to serial converter. This is why the display refresh rate is kinda low. The screens themselves are 96x96 per screen, 16bit color. They tend to "flash" a little (I guess that's the OLED for ya).

    I've been programming this device for a weekends worth now. I checked the software they gave and it was ok. It does crash VERY often, though it's not the device that's causing the crashes. The USB to serial chip they use is made by Porlific and I think it's the PL-2303. Now googling for that seems to indicate prolific has had a bad history with working drivers.

    Now being the nerdy hacker type, it seems that for me it only crashes when disconnecting by software. So my solution was to create a stub program in C# that connects to the device, stays connected all the time and listens for incoming TCP connections and routes those to the device. This way the computer stays connected to the device all the time and I can restart the controlling software as often as I like. Haven't had any problems with this approach yet. Still I hope Prolific fixes their serial drivers.

    As for when it comes to the performance, I've noticed something weird. All of my software is currently in C# and has not been optimized. But when feeding the device with image data, the program that sends it to the device takes around 9%, while the program that generates the packets takes somwthing like 40%. This seems kinda weird and I do have some hope of fixing it. :)

    As for the device itself, the reviews I've read have been pretty accurate. It always makes me feel bad to press a display. And the buttons are not as "solid" as I'd like.

    But with enough work I hope to make even something good out of it. I was hoping of making an animated game, but no way of doing that with that serial adapter standing in between.