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Pedals for your PC (but not for gaming)
Kris_J writes "Bilbo Innovations
produce a set of pedals that plug in between your keyboard
and PC. They are used to emulate keystrokes - the
default is CTRL, ALT & SHIFT, but they'll do lots more than
that. " Maybe its just my aching wrists, but I'm beginning
to wonder more and more about things like this. Are pedals
a good idea for ergonomics? Anyone tried it? Will it work under
Linux?
How do you fix that for the console, though? Not everybody uses X all the time...
Those IBM keyboards rock. You are so right.
Not these mushy plastic gummy $5 units
that come with every clone on the market.
The newer IBM keyboards are pretty good too.
Same positive click, but a bit less clunky.
(the "click" is a little less heavy.) Also
they have a smaller one, that takes up about
1/3 the desk space. Same feel.
I have a neat keytronic too. Very short throw,
but you still know when it's down. I can type
incredibly fast with it, because my fingers
hardly do any work, but I'm not constantly
wondering if the bloody key is down or not.
They don't make'em like they used to.
Where can I find them?
I find that neoprene wrist braces work well on
wrist aches. They allow you to continue use
while your wrist heals and also help you learn
good hand posture while using the mouse of
keyboard.
Especially in noisy dorm halls. So nice and peacefull. Oh hell, I do it at home too, and my parents aren't THAT noisy.
Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift.
'nuff said.
I had to drop out of graduate school because none
of my professors thought it was not a good idea to dosuch a thing. Get this, my professor wanted me
to do instead, measure the drag coeeficient of
mice instead. After that adventure, I came to the conclusion that ergonomics comes from people that *USE* the stuff every day, not the people in white coats who think about the poor people that use the stuff every day. Oh well, I'm a sysadmin now, despite my BS in Psychology and 2 years of grad school in Human Factors Engineering.
f*ck you, it's bullshit. What's next, a sensor you shove up your butt that will trigger the "esc" key when you tighten your butt muscles? Ridiculous. OPENBSD R0X
Real men use Ctrl-[
Check out http://www.footmouse.com/
I actually used one of these to play
a full game of solitare at a show once
just to get a cool T-Shirt.
Don't use em. Too hard to coordinate the pressing. Found myself changing Emacs keying patterns so that I could hold down control instead of trying to time it each time. I prefer typing, I guess. Didn't try setting up longer macros.... I suppose that could be useful. Until the cat's repartition your disk one day.
Maybe if you were a better coder you would have to say up all night.
Who cares what it stands for, it's just cool
I don't use the pedals, but I do use their Essential keyboard.
It's amazing. And it does the Dvorak key conversion internally, so it's 'plug-and-play' I just have to carry my keyboard around with me.
Been on Dvorak for over a year now, and love it. It's even better on this keyboard.
It took a bit to get used to 'space' and 'enter' both being a thumb key, and 'back space' and 'del' being the other thumb.
Sure beats that QWERTY crap and a traditional keyboard.
I'm on the Essential keyboard too.
I took it one step further...I went Dvorak. No more stinky QWERTY for me.
Foot pedals have been tried. Hand/foot coordination isn't as good as you'd hope.
If one hand is about to fall off, and the other isn't, try a one-handed chord keyboard:
http://www.handykey.com/
I've met people who use them all day. Slower than using two hands, but not disastrously slower.
I have been thinking of using a pedal for the escape key (I'm a vi guy). I'm tired of stretching for it.
Actually, jump and crouch are naturals for this.. There was some action at id where they were looking at coding in support for midi pedals to do just this. I may pick up a pair, just to use em in games! the more input the better.
Vitriol
There's a more recent product, also called the Foot Mouse, that emulated a PS/2-mouse. The implementation was fairly bad: one foot controlled movement, the other a two-way rocker switch doing left/right mouse button. Unfortunately the implementation for the movement pedal was essentially a 4-way joystick: it was easy to move left/right/up/down, but very hard to move on diagonals. I couldn't get used to it.
There are many alternatives. I'd first recommend a trackball. Touchpads are good too. Switching back and forth gives you variety that helps alleviate problems from becoming critical and bad habits from developing.
The previous generation thought of this too-- Lucky WordStar users on CP/M machines found a Control pedal to be quite handy.
In the early 80's I saw an ad or two for product, and read a construction article on building your own pedal-- I forget what magazine it was in though. Byte, most likely...
How would these pedals affect deathmatch performance?
anubis
The reason normal keyboards and mice can get painful is the unnatural and repetitive positioning of your hand, arms and upper-body--not the reaching. So adding foot-pedals just extends the effects to your lower body.
I don't doubt that it could increase speed--but so could a better keyboard layout.
I could REALLY use a foot mouse, BAD.
The mouse really hurts my hand, and besides that, it slows down my speed horribly having to reach over for the mouse, move it, type, move it, type...
The penalty is like a disk's read/write head having to seek.
In related news, Micro$oft has announced plans for a similar device, consisting of CTRL, ALT and SHIFT pedals plus a windows key and the patented "intelli-boot" wheel, which doubles as a reset button.
Who cares if it works for Linux? The real question is, does it work for Windows 98?
I did this at a time when my wrists were in very bad shape. Using the buttons as Shift and Ctrl was very effective at taking the strain off my wrists (it's the two-button combinations that really take a toll on your wrists). The problem was, you have to sit up straight to use them, you can't slouch or put your feet up on your desk. It got uncomfortable after a while.
This place is selling a foot mouse that looks interesting. I'm not sure how or if they can manage more than one mouse button. Anyone heard anything about these? http://www.new-kewl.com/spots/spot-nohands.html
I've gotten a kinesis for both work and home. Very comfortabe (after a short readjustment period), no special driver's needed...just plug one of the keyboard connectors into the pedals, it's great for "chording" (you gamers know what I mean), plus you get tons of comments on it. Don't let the high price fool you. I picked up both of mine just barely used for $60 each.
They worked quite well, overall. They petals themselves are kinda cheesy: cheap plastic around a simple switch, and connected to the main box using RJ-11 connectors and silver satin telephone cable.
The logic box was programmed using a little program under Windows. The box will work with Linux, but it has to be programmed using Windows. You can hook any keystroke to the petal-down event or petal-up event of each petal.
If you want a quality setup, you can purchase heavy, industrial petals through a company like Grainger, then disassemble the main box and solder in the industrial petal cables. Worked quite well for me.
One more tip: If you keep the cheesy plastic petals, put velcro on the bottom of them. This'll keep them in place pretty well.
-tgm
I wired an organ foot pedal array into my MBC1000 keyboard. Shift was especially nice. In the end though, having one's seating postion dictated was worse than the advantages.
How about a mouse I can operate from inside my shoe with my toe?
I don't know about the Elan, but I'm typing this with a Kinesis Classic on a Sparc 5. The keyboard comes with some software, but I've never looked at it -- you can do anything you need, including remapping keys and switching between Dvorak and qwerty on the fly, right from the keyboard.
- Damien (neild at einstein.org)
The pedals should be Ctrl-alt and Delete. Since those seem to be the most used on Windows boxes.
I've got a kinesis contoured with the footpedal option, and it's helped my wrists quite a bit. I have the 2 swith pedal, and I have them mapped to the up and down keys.
It was farily common to hack an atari trackball to work on the Amiga, and use footswitches for the mouse buttons. (The atari 5200 trackballs were available surplus for 5-10$) The axis were backwards though.
I think the footswitches were to make up for the fact that the buttons on the trackball sucked.
If you can't add footswitches to the run of the mill keyboard without buying a bunch of crap, then you need to go join the Microsloth trolls.
For me, proper posture is difficult due to my vision problems, I am legally blind. However if you can sit up straight in your chair without having to hunch over the keyboard like I do to see the screen, good. If your chair is high enough make sure your feet are planted on the floor, it'll help your back. If your chair is not high enough for that you have to do some creative stuff. You want to be sitting up straight and comfortable is the key.
Consider lowering your desk a few inches if you can. If you can't once again a higher chair may be wise. If that is also not going to work, consider a keyboard tray that mounts to the bottom of your desk/table. In the case of my folding table this would take a bit of doing but when other options won't work, that will. (now if I could find a good arm, I'd have to make my own tray, see the split keyboard thing above) Also make sure your monitor is high enough. Recycle a few fonebooks if you must, just make sure it's high enough that you're not tilting your head forward to read the monitor. That has direct bad results for your hands and it's not too good on your shoulders either.
I do not recommend the Microsoft Natural or Natural Elite. The Natural's keys are too squishy and the membrane is just not good for extended wear and tear. The Natural Elite is probably not much better, but it's lighter and smaller--a good thing. Problem is the lighter and smaller part is a result of abusing the editing keys down to half-size keys in a bad arrangement. Avoid it. The keyboard I use is an Adesso Tru-Form. It can be purchased with a touchpad, if you like those get that model. If you don't the keyboard will cost you all of $40 if you can find it and it's worth every penny. Good keyboard, sturdy. Keep it clean and it'll last you a few years. This one is pushing 3 years now and I'm not kind to membrane keyboards. I learned to type on an IBM/Lexmark PS/2 keyboard and old Apple //e's.
I have seen the kinesis keyboards (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com) and they are a dream to type on once you get the hang of them. I personally would not want their more pricey keyboards because my hands don't quite fit the things the way I'd want them to, but the Maxim looks sweet. See if you can try it sometime. Get the optional keypad though, and learn to use it if you have to enter numbers very often. It'll save your hands and your brain much frustration.
If you want to discuss ergonomics issues or are just curious about any of the above, I can be reached at knghtbrd at debian dot org.
Ergonomically speaking, it's tough to tell whether a foot pedal will help or hurt. It probably depends on the design and how it's used. If you've had wrist problems, you might have noticed that if you keep typing 'through the pain', you tend to end up with pain in other parts of your body: shoulder, neck, back, etc., because you try to compensate for the wrists. If you try to move some work to the feet, it might help: you could lessen the work of the arms, or it might even force you to use good posture. Or it might hurt: maybe you end up with the foot equivalent of tendonitis, or maybee it puts you in a bad posture and you end up with knee, hip, or back pain. I think it's worth a try if you have 'sore wrists', but you should at the least make sure it doesn't force you into an obviously bad position.
As for cures for wrist pain, I had it once, and got conflicting advice (use wrist braces, don't use wrist braces. Let them rest, exercise them). What worked for me was what seemed like unnaturally harsh stretches, but I suspect the answer is that no particular 'cure' will work for everyone. One thing I did and continue to do is to switch the mouse to my 'off' hand. I'm right-handed, and my left hand does the mousing. I find this tends to distribute the load better. And it's not that hard to get the coordination to use a mouse, although, admittedly, I don't do a lot of delicate GUI work.
>btw, what does WOM stand for :-)
:-)
Write Only Memory of course
I am looking for alternatives.
r ies
Here is one I found:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/prodlist.html#accesso
Any others?
Windows 98 loading...
di-di-di dah-dah-dah di-di-di !!!
Check the archives dangling from here for illustrations.
Mind the Gap
I tried turning a normal mouse into a foot mouse. It didn't work too well - I think I prefer operating a touchpad with my thumbs.
Posted by Eidos:
Actually, I see a perfectly good reason to own a set of these. That is, if you were a person with some sort of wrist or hand handicap.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a small percentage of the population to hit Alt-Y or Alt-1 or some such thing with only one hand or with tendon trouble, arthritis, etc....
Just a thought.
I've never done it, but I've heard of people taking a track ball (the real thing dummy, not those thumb whatchmacallits) putting foot pedals on the buttons, and useing their feet to control it. Not sure it would work great for games, but for choosing your window (What else do you need a mouse for anyway?) it is said to work great.
With my carpil tunnel problems I'd like to try it. Maybe I could then play my mandolin wihtout pain.
When I dislocated my shoulder three years ago, I was in a nasty brace for a while and a sling after that, so I nearly got the company I worked for to get some of those for me. Turned out I was able to get enough freedom with the sling to do full-fledged typing, so we didn't end up getting them, but if you're one-armed I think it wouldn't be a bad idea.
Another alternative no one has mentioned is the chord keyboard, one of which is commercially known as the Bat. Again, I've never actually tried it, although there are times when I hate the cost of moving from keyboard to mouse.
My personal idea, free for any takers, is the "mouse keyboard." Basically, movement of the keyboard itself (or perhaps just pressure, a la SpaceTec's spaceorb et al) would serve as mouse movements. This would be meant for more as a supplemental device -- there's no reason you should have to be stuck with just one mouse/trackball/etc.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Haven't pedals been around ever since MIDI was invented? They were just used to turn your computer into an instrument. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to reuse the same technology from MIDI to control the keyboard? It looks like another company just figured out how to make money off of old technology by creating a proprietary interface and driver.
Well, you've already got Control, Shift and Alt on the keyboard, so the obvious use for the pedals is as Meta, Myper and Super modifiers.
M-x 1000 praise-emacs
Of course, if you've got one of those dodgy Windows keyboards you can always use those wacky extra keys instead -- remember, xkeycaps is your friend.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
I've also wondered about this stuff.
I think using it for keystrokes is kinda stupid - it would be better to use it as an alternative to a mouse so you wouldn't ever need to move your hands off the keyboard.
Still not satisfactory - bring on the implants. Humanity doesn't have long to go, we'll all plug into our computers, then we'll mesh with the hardware, then we'll use the hardware in our heads for enhanced communication, but multiple communicating processors are really just a single machine once communication bandwidth gets high enough... we will become the Borg.. any other existence will seem shallow, and eventually literally unthinkable (try to imagine being a mollusk). All within a few hundred years. Isn't technology wonderful.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The ENTER key is one of the most used on the keyboard, uses the weakest finger, and takes one of the longest stretches to reach. That'd be the first key I'd want on a pedal. And since it's not a modifier key, it wouldn't take as much coordination to use...
Check out the Jargon file entry on double bucky complete with this song:
Double Bucky
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Why do I think that this development might just herald the return of the space-cadet keyboard?
] )
(The keyboard equivalent of this command is [left-pedal]+[right-pedal]+[meta]+[left-shift]+[Q
...but it's very simple, I like that. did anyone read in the FAQ you have to reprogram the pedals with M$..."Does it work with OS/2? [UNIX, WindowsNT, NeXT Step, etc.]
Yes. However, to reprogram the pedals you would have to run the Bilbo pedal reassignment software under DOS or Windows. "
http://www.bilbo.com/faq.html
how U going to do that with *nix?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I know we aren't talking about Gaming, but a guy
who regularly whipes the walls with me in quake used foot pedals to strafe.
Vermifax
Logout
As one of those people who tends to shake his leg involuntarily, I can see what would happen should I get a device like this:
I wOuLd TyPe lIkE sOmE ElItE IrC fReAk.
-- Rick
I sure could use this. After about an hour or two of mousing, my arm is sore all the way up to my shoulder.
However, rarely is there a time when I am sitting down that one of my legs is not bouncing and twitching around. (I know I'm not the only one). This would solve a lot.
Brian
Ever since I redefined my keyboard (away from QWERTY, to my own layout), I've never had any such problems... OK, I don't type at 500 cpm with it yet (I do with QWERTY), but I like it more and more...
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
I was actually thinking about this a while ago could be a fun way to get that advantage on those games :^P
"Here's 50 bucks, take this in case I get drunk and call you a bitch later." - Ricky (Vince Vaughn)Made (2001)
Certainly such a setup seems worthwhile if you have aching wrists. Anything that reduces stretching is worth a try.
However, if your wrists are healthy I'd hesitate to habituate yourself to a setup that will hamper you if you ever have to work on a machine that doesn't have pedals (at least w/ a Dvorak (sp?) keyboard, you can usually remap easily if you have to work on another machine - but if you got used to pedals, you'd have to bring them with you).
A friend of mine had one of those huge trackballs on his C64, and it would be fun to use it in X for feet movement.
On the other hand: Does X support 2 miceinputs at the same time?
- the Crazy Fraggle
a company came out with the Foot Mouse in 1985. I worked for a company writing DOS drivers for it. It was a Foot Joystick, really, a 3" mushroom that you shoved around with your foot. Trouble was it was spring-loaded with very strong springs so you had to use too much leg muscle -- OK if standing, no good if sitting. Maybe it was a prototype. It never went anywhere in the market.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
yep, in X with reasonable toolkits (motif doesn't count), shift-insert pastes the selection. I wish the Linux console did the same; maybe there's a way to do it in the keymap. and every decent window manager lets you bind keys to activate specific windows and warp the cursor to them, so you can easily define keys to pop up xterms in various positions, warp to them, etc... useful to keep your hands on the keyboard. and the ultimate in mouse laziness: a key that tells a running netscape to go to the url in the current selection.
I've been meaning to switch to Dvorak for so long; right now I type US-qwerty no matter what the keyboard layout actually is (it's sucky french azerty most of the time). the thing that's been keeping me from dvorak is thinking that it'll mess up my vi(m) bindings. once hjkl are not in their usual position, you have to re-learn vi. that, or make qwerty-bindings for all its command keys...
From their webpage:
Because the control box supplies standard scan codes into the keyboard port, no resident software driver is used. If the user accepts the default " Ctrl - Alt - Shift " configuration, no software is needed - just plug in the pedals and play! The only purpose of the supplied software, is to reassign the pedals (if desired) to keys other than the default keys. (To do this, DOS or Windows must be running.) After the reassignment is completed, the pedal software can be removed from computer memory. The new configuration will be stored by the control box, even when the power is turned off.
i work with sun boxen now and i miss my pinky esc oh so bad....sniff snifff.....damn you, damn you all....ok i'm better now.
...goes well with coffee, a geek staple.
I've been using an M$ 'natural' kbd for over two years, and I'm very comfortable with it. Keeps my wrists from getting tinggly. But I'd love to try it in Dvorak.
The greatest kbd I've ever used came from a 'Northgate' computer, in the early '90's. Remember those? They had a "*" key and a "" key where the "Win" keys are on the clone boards. That REALLY made it handy.
So I guess it's just a matter of choice.
I can't see how anyone can like the IBM mice though. Those two freaky button-bars, and the jacked-up rear end that made it look like a dragster.. That was definite abuse on my hands.
Any experience with trackballs out there? Does having them in one place make it easier to reach for them - when you DO have to take your hands of the keys?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I've got the Kinesis Classic keyboard and their 3-button foot pedal ( that I use for ctrl-shift-mouse )
It's really great from an ergo point of view because you almost never have to "chord".
Chording is bad because you often have to stretch your hands in unnatural ways to do it. I'll recommend this keyboard and the footpad to anyone who will listen.
a device called a "rat" (not sure who makes/made it) that was essentially a grossly oversized mouse that sits on the floor under your desk, operated by your feet... one of the guys i used to work with was fond of them (although he still actually preferred an optical mouse for his own use...).
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
YASA (Yet Another Stupid Add-on)
For some people this can be handy, but I doubt you can speed up the interaction with your PC dramatically.
no no no !!
:-)
these are Metal Interface Thingies
just some Dumb Old Devices
they say it's Easy Usage
but it's just Waste Of Money
btw, what does WOM stand for
I can't believe that Bill Joy intended people to use the key marked Esc. After all the whole phillosphy behind vi is not taking you hands off the home row. I believe he meant people to use Ctrl-[ which is quite reachable from the home row - if you have a Ctrl key to the left of your A key.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
samf: please tell me which keys you have on the
4 big thumb keys: I'm thinking of putting spc, ret, del, and control on them and then using
Emacs's keyboard-translate-table to translate ret to esc.
(I dont need esc on a thumb key when I'm not in Emacs and I can use Control-m instead of a thumb key for ret when in Emacs)
Didn't Xerox Parc investigate foot pedals for pointer control back in the 1970's?
Well, I don't know about this thing, but there used to be a company out there that produces a product, intended for those are disabled, that allowed input of text via code key/paddles/keyer.
It's been a while since I saw it, couldn't tell you where to find it.
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
This means you can program them to CTRL-ALT-DEL and have "emergency brakes" for Windoze :-)
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
I mean, if it plugs inline with the keyboard, it's just generating the signals for those keys.. Unless you have to use some windoze proggy to program the things...
anyway, i just want the neural adapter... read something about that.. they were using alpha wave modulation to generate on/off signals, and using a software program to convert these into keystrokes.. not long now boys..
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Q: What is wrong with "Plug and play" concept?
A: Foreplay is missing.
I too can vouch for the Kinesis. And, I have also gone Dvorak, but I didn't do this until many months after buying the Kinesis. Of the two changes, I think the Kinesis made the most difference. But I'm an emacs user, and the control and alt keys on each thumb is a huge win.
Problems people will site are `no one else can use my keyboard' and `I won't be able to use any other keyboard'. With the former, Kinesis sells a `combiner' so that you can have a flat keyboard in tandem, if that's a big worry. For the latter, it's possible to switch back and forth, the flat one is just uncomfortable. (But using Dvorak opens a whole other can of worms!)
Does it work with Linux? Of course, provided your machine can take a PC keyboard. If not, Kinesis sells adapters for Sun and Mac. They have some software that runs on DOS, but you don't need it, not even for the QWERTY/Dvorak switching.
I have no financial interest in Kinesis, other than I'd like them to stay in business so I can buy more keyboards when the two I own wear out!
I used these at Comdex last November. They were surprisingly easy to use. I can't vouche for long-term ergonomic effects, but they were comfortable short-term. Probably the best thing about them was that I could use a GUI without constantly taking my hands off the keyboard. It was a little tricky to learn (left foot forward and back for left and right-click, right foot for moving the cursor) but didn't take long.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Double Bucky
Dvorak do not do my day ;)
Uh! I use iBM Ballistic 2H Keyball, it's fun. And it's eXtremely usable. Big Ball (left side is (iBM) blue and another is white) and I just hold it with my both hands! And I can press enter, ctrl, alt just with my thumbs! First it was quite tricky to learn wirte (ups!) with this ball, but now i type like Demon from AD&D! I think i can type at least 1k kpbm with this ball...
As you all know, one day we will all plug some chip directly to our brain. Untill then, I think every body part we have should be used for the human interface with the machine.
I don't know about you guys, but I write ovec 8000 lines of code every week, and I've pretty much used all possible shortcuts on my keyboard.
This actulally provides me with 2 more. Cool.
papi
- Chernobyl used windows
I have a friend who lives in Emacs and he has pedals mapped to Meta and Control. He was getting hand problems and they helped him out. The pedals combined with some wild ergonomic keyboard and a Dvorak keymapping also seem to make him the fastest typist I know.