Optimus Mini Three OLED keyboard reviewed

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.

Comments

Don't worry

[tygerstripes]

This is just the basic Optimus.

There's more to the Prime edition than meets the eye.

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do we think this is hardware limitation?

Per the article, the software is constantly updating the images to make sure they have the correct images, this is surely driving the CPU load higher than it needs to be

Re:Don't worry

[1u3hr]

Maybe they could be convinced to open source the drivers and let the community take a shot at it. Or do we think this is hardware limitation?

See here for hte docs and code. This is really an Alpha version, but rapidly evolving according to TFA.

Re:Don't worry

[rblancarte]

Then why not have some descent embedded controller built into the keyboard that controlled this? IE - the only real communication between the CPU and keyboard (outside of typing) is a refresh of what application is running. Then the keyboard micro-controller would be notified of the change and update the keys accordingly. Then the CPU doesn't even have to worry about what to display - just make sure that the keyboard is aware of current state. Heck, state changes like key-press (changing what the keys look like when you press ctrl or alt) wouldn't even touch the CPU - they would be known about by the controller, and it could modify they keys accordingly.

To me, this is a very cheap way to make the keyboard much more effecient, yet not raise the cost much at all ($10-20 max).

RonB

Re:Don't worry

[rblancarte]

BTW - the above statement is made without knowing the innards of this thing - they may already be doing this, so if they are - then CPU problems are really only a driver thing.

RonB

Any Key

[Apocalypse111]

Am I the only one who wants to make a driver hack for the Optimus so that when the computer says, "Press any key to continue" that there actually IS an Any key?

Re:Any Key

[mwvdlee]

This keyboard allows quick access to the three most commonly used keys; "Ctrl", "Alt" and "Delete". I just wonder whether the design is rugged enough to last a full week of Windows use.

Re:Any Key

[Doctor Memory]

Heh. If you do, you should enable mapping it to every key. No more agonizing decisions over "OK" or "Cancel": just "Fuck it".

Re:Any Key

[green1]

memories from the old DOS days....

2 ways I saw of dealing with this stuff that were well done...

instead of "press any key to continue" pk-software (surely you remember pk-zip) used "press a key to continue" which meant that anyone with a brain would hit whatever they wanted, but those clueless types could press "a" and everything would be fine.

the second one was a keyboard I used to have, the main enter key was labelled "enter" but the one on the numeric keypad was labelled "return" (or vice-versa I can't remember) meaning that no matter which term a programmer had chosed to use, the user would find it written on the keyboard...

both of these were very simple solutions to this age old problem, I never understood why those practices didn't catch on...

Re:Any Key

[MrNonchalant]

That's one of the features already.

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-mini/ presentation/

Go there and click Any.

Packaging?

[conigs]

...and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device.

I am shocked... shocked I tell you to learn that the image on the package looks better than the actual device. How could this possibly have happened? Who would dream of such a thing?

Onto the device itself. I'm glad to see it develop and that it's more than just a concept. The technology is still in its infancy and it will take time for it to improve and come down to an affordable level. I'm looking forward to the day I can get a full keyboard like this.

Re:Packaging?

[cyclomedia]

For the full keyboard it'd probably be better to use some kind of e-paper like system, you get the black and white contrast of your normal keys combined with the instant ability to switch languages or to FPS mode, albeit the latter with 4-shade greyscale icons. Color for the sake of color on such a small device seems pointless to me*

*disclaimer: my PDA is about 6 years old, has 8mb ram, supports 16 shades of grey and a small but usable keyboard that you can actually type on, so i'm hardly the ultra techy geek to be commenting on this sort of thing :-)

Re:Packaging?

[jacobw]

Indeed. Anybody want to take bets on how long it takes to go from "buggy, overpriced, and useless" to "cheap and indispensable"? I'm betting 5 years, max.

Of course, when it becomes ubiquitious, there will be certain downsides. You think the "zap the mosquito" ad is annoying now?

Wait until the mosquito starts buzzing around your keyboard.

Re:Packaging?

[oc255]

I see your point of "ads everywhere", however I'm going to stay optimistic here. So let's say they ship a utility that lets you manage this spiffy new keyboard. It might look like a 3rd party mouse control panel, N52 gamepad, Palm Sync app. I doubt very much that it would allow automatic flash .swf syncing, not to mention a flash player engine on the keyboard itself.

Allow if it did, someone would write adblock to block the ads or TiVo for keyboards to skip the ads using magical time-shifting techniques.

Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
Fry: "Not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And t-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree!"

That will be next. An OLED dreamcatcher from Optimus that you hang on your bed, bluetooth enabled for maximum R.E.M. product placement bandwidth to the OBEY chip in your skull.

Re:Packaging?

[Forseti]

It's their explanation, not mine. Besides, I think they wanted animated key icons to be a selling point, which certainly falls into the "Ooo shiny!" category. Though you have to admit, if it works, it's pretty cool!

Re:Packaging?

[KDR_11k]

Or label the cancel button on your controller O and the confirm button X...

wrapup

[camusflage]

It's buggy, slow, fraudulently packaged, consumes an inordinate amount of your CPU, has been delayed many times, delivers on only a fraction of its originally advertised functionality, and is extremely expensive.

Has someone let Steve Ballmer know that Optimus has stolen Microsoft's marketing plan?????

Intresting.... but...

[strredwolf]

I read through the article, and it looked like just a normal embedded chip with extra RAM hooked in for the displays. I wouldn't be suprized if the extra CPU on the PC is used to refresh the displays often.

Ugh.

I think a OLED full keyboard would be cool, but maybe if they used a double-USB device scheme it would be better: USB Keyboard and small USB storage for storing GIF files of each key.

dude.... virtual desktops!

[nagashi]

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

"Gem"

[Anonymous Coward]

The author of this article is hereby banned from using the word "gem" ever again, except to describe a precious stone.

Slashdot stats in realtime!

[Anonymous Coward]

check this out,
This site can actually cope with a slashdoting pretty easily,

Nevertheless its pretty cool to look at their stats and see the slashdotting take place:
http://tweakers.net/stats

Scroll down to "reviews" to see the major increase in traffic since a few minutes.

Re:Slashdot stats in realtime!

[WoLpH]

Translation: "The MySQL server is sleeping..."

Simply put, the server can't take the enormous load of /.

OLED for Monitor

[in2mind]

So we have OLED for keyboard?
What actually happened to those predictions that OLED would soon replace LCD for monitors?? Is anything happening in the mainstream?

Breast keys

[Gentlewhisper]

If you are watching porn is it possible to have a mini thumbnail of your video playback display on the keypad as well?

This is a genuine question!

Re:It Shows Promise

[MindStalker]

While I don't see much purpose for the 3 button model, I can't wait to see how the full keyboard performs and what sort of price we'll be looking at to purchase one.

Three words, awesome case mod!

But practical use? No, not really, it could good for switching between virtual desktops. In some type of emergency management system you could even have a key blink if its associated desktop has some emergency situation you need to attend to.

I don't get it?

[Voltas]

Other then "gadget factor" whats the real value in this?

This reminds me of the "Tablet PC" revolution (I baught one). Although a great piece of technology there wasn't a significant increase in productivity or features that warented the extra effort to adapt to the technology.

A big win for any "bleeding edge" technology is if the added productivity and features out way the effort to convert from an existing platform.

Winning Examples:
iPod (MP3 Player)
Mouse -> Cordless Mouse
Touchpad
Cell Phone OS' (When a cellphone started doing more then dialing)
PDA

Losers:
One-handed Keyboard
Tablet PC
OLED Keyboard

If your average user has to change they're process and spend alot of time configuring with low return on the effort your user accaptance is going to be significantly reduces.

Sure you can through any piece of technology in front of me and I'll play with it for a week or a month but if I can't adapt it to existing effort or it changes me to do things differantly then I'll put it down.

Bah... get a real keyboard!

[Stormwatch]

Unicomp. The true one and only heir to the IBM Model M.

Re:Bah... get a real keyboard!

[damieng]

I've an original Model M (keyspring), a Mattias Pro (Alps switch) and a Das Keyboard II (Cherry switch).

The Das Keyboard II is nicer to type on than the IBM imho...

Re:Bah... get a real keyboard!

[1gig]

Personaly I like the Das as well but I really prefer to have the keys marked so I got the Cherry G803000LPMUS-0 which is the same keyboard as the Das (gray instead of black though). They are still expensive but $67 for a good keyboard is not to bad. All the new high end keyboards or you could say quality mechanical keyboards are using the Cherry MX Liner keyswitches so why not buy from the source and save some money. The only problem is they are hard to find basicly only POS providers have them here in the states. If you live in the EU though they are allot easer to find.

Let me be the first to say thanks.

[Grendel Drago]

Thank you, to all the dorks who buy overpriced, half-baked, barely-functional products like this one. You fund the research and development that makes these things useful for the rest of us. We salute you.

Re:CTRL-ALT-DEL jokes in 3..2..1..

[xtracto]

It seems you are 4 jokes late :)

...another mini3 review...

[daniel.baker]

Dead Programmer has an informative review over here: http://www.deadprogrammer.com/optimus-mini-three-f ull-review

OLED Mouse

[DeadCatX2]

Why not make the OLED's mouse buttons instead?

Two OLED buttons would be just fine.

And they should be able to make a driverless interface using the HID class and USB. It's just silly to write your own drivers when USB drivers exist on all platforms to interface your hardware with.

Re:OLED Mouse

[backwardMechanic]

Why not make the OLED's mouse buttons instead?

Because your fingers would cover them up?

Got one, been a bit disappointed.

[XMunkki]

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.

For a full keyboard?

[phorm]

There would be lots of uses. In games you could show icons with the actual functionality of the keys (fire, grenade, teleport, hyderdrive, whatever).

In word processing applications you could show which keys do things such as undo, etc

When you hold shift or caps the letters can switch between upper and lower case

When you press CTRL the associated function keys could change to show their designated function.

Lots of possibilities here, though a lot do depend on the software itself supporting the keyboard.

Re:Site unavailable due to "power failure"

[hylke]

No, Redbus, which is the location tweakers.net is located had a power failure, which made foobar of some part of the database. The servers didn't have any problem with slashdot, as you can see at the statspage :)