Feels like HTX blew up out of nowhere with a ton of long form content at once, but they were huge in Chinese social media already, and finally decided to start translating previous content to english and uploading to Youtube.
I've been watching them in Chinese for a while. Their video production evolved through the years by leaps and bounds. Their technical skill also skyrocketed. But it started as a channel with technical reviews and some DIY.
I recently learned that it's not just the switch, but also the gasket, so the switch plate material, the foam layers and even the keycap itself. I built two different split keyboards recently with the same simple Kailh box red v2 switch and they sound and feel completely different just because of the thickness of the switch plate and the type of keycaps I use.(check this for example https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HIldaxljpzc )
You can check if you find the switches colors here(it looks like an Akko purple pro, but not quite) https://keeb-finder.com/switches
Whereas rtings has a filtering list that also has sound profiles in the review pages.
You can get aula f75 for cheap, arround 50$, there are plenty of sound tests on youtube as it's very popular.
I got that version and I am happy, but if I was to buy a new one I would get the full size f108 because it's important for me to have distance between arrow keys and other keys. And tbh I would just get an apple keyboard or something similarly slim because it's more confortable for me. However for thicc (mechanical switch) keyboards, aula f75 has great specs and sound at a very good price.
I imagine it's uncomfortable to grip since you need to be careful to not press a key doing so. Since you can't rely on fingers much for grip, you could put more force pressing downward with your wrist but that would also add friction with the table. Mice are small enough that you can fit your hand around it, but a keyboard is large and flat.
I'm assuming it's too heavy and has too much contact surface (so more friction), making it too hard to glide smoothly.
There's probably something with the position of the hand when you move the mouse as well. At least I seem to be moving mostly the wrist when I use my mouse, meaning that my hand and forearm are not always aligned; without this alignment, I feel there's more strain on the wrist when typing.
These guys are quite well-known in China and have recently started uploading tto Youtube as well. Their videos are quite entertaining and have extremely high production value compared to many other creators.
I've found pretty good success just using a planck with layers swaping left/right halves. Its not my daily driver but it becomes surprisingly intuitive to do more with less.
If anyone's interested in something way faster that still lets you go one handed. Take a look at the charachorder. You can type one handed, or easily rip 200wpm with 2 hands. But it does take like a year to get fast. I was coming from a moonlander tho so I was ready
I want to pull the trigger on this so badly. I've had my eyes on it for years. It seems the best way to increase typing speed is to reduce finger movement via physical modifications to a keyboard.
Does charachorder support Dvorak-like layout mentally? Not a 1-1 but something similar? Like vowels on left hand?
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software.
Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then.
https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
I was maintaining [1] which might be useful to you, but it's become outdated. It doesn't have a filter for one handed keyboards, but some of the "two halves" ones might be appropriate.
(If someone is interested in taking the site over and bringing it up to date, please open an issue.)
On OS X you can achieve this with Keyb, Karabiner Elements, etc. It's also easy to do with a programmable keyboard with ZMK/QMK. I've set up my Kinesis 360 Pro this way, being symmetrical means I can access every key easily. Hardware support for sticky keys also helps quite a bit.
The mirror board is an interesting idea as it allows to start with a normal keyboard and one could then switch to a smaller board with the muscle memory trained. I would prefer a different switch key though. I use cap lock as a layer switch on my keyboards. But I will think about it and try out a few things.
It could already be useful in situation where I need to keep my hand over the mousepad.
Yes, having a special keyboard can be limiting in that it’s a pain to cart around to hook up to laptops, etc. and to get an extra in case it fails.
It still could be nice to have something optimized, though. If you ever design one, please share it, because I think you’d get more interest than you’d think.
I began to have interest in developing for everyone (primarily for differences for vision, though difference in hearing, memory, learning also) about 13 years ago, and got little support from the small company I worked for. We had a very color-specific interface, because we were space-limited. Then, wouldn’t you know it, our next manager was red-green colorblind, but it didn’t bother her.
I got jaded about it, learning that basically no one cared enough, and that people just get ignored and struggle with their adaptive devices. This still pisses me off, and I was once thinking heavily about applying a job where I could do something about it, but I don’t have the required background.
With AI, there’s beginning to be almost no excuse for someone not to add first-class support for all types of people into their interfaces and process, but people still continue to design like everyone is a twenty-something y.o. with full hearing, 20/15 full color vision, 130 IQ average, and no memory or learning differences or other modalities.
I saw the keyboard to be operated by the left hand only and here is my (totally personal and somewhoat adjacent) problem with it.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
I'm at the point where I need to redefine cmd-z, x, c, v because my left thumb doesn't want to do that dance anymore. It's been painful for a year, and I finally got to the point of redefining it a couple weeks ago. And the muscle memory is so ingrained that I changed it to option ', 1, 2, 3 and never thought about the idea that my right hand could do it.
Please do your hands a favor and get yourself an ergonomic keyboard! Thumb keys especially alleviate the issues with modifiers that you're describing.
I use a Glove80 as my daily driver right now, although the price tag to build quality ratio is not amazing, so idk if I would recommend it particularly. But there's a massive world of ergo keyboards out there--surely the right one for you exists somewhere!
I was getting hand pain, switched to a Totem keyboard. 38 keys, 6 thumb keys. Column splay & never reaching for number row has greatly helped. 20g actuation means little force needed
Like people trying to find new interfaces for music making [thank god touchscreens!], there are people trying to figure out new hardware for interacting with computers. Thank you dudes!
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
Matias has a neat one-handed keyboard. It's quite expensive for what it is, especially considering these days where it's so easy to get a keyboard with remappable keys. There's a simulator on the sidebar at the link, and IMO it's quite intuitive.
I tried that concept whith my ergodox when i had an arm in a splint, but i couldnt quite get my brain to wrap around it. I could type on the right key, but not press the mirror/switch key at the right moment.
What would have made it easier is if it could infer the right key like an autocorrect
I'm trying to understand why this isn't a thing already. It seems there would be a market for it; when you consider all the different keyboards shapes and sizes...
Check out chorded keyboards. They've been a thing for a very long time. At least since early 00s or 90s when I saw them first. They are held one handed have 5 keys and you get different letters by chording multiple keys together.
first consumer device I ever saw was the Microwriter, back in the 1980's .. but court stenographers have been using chorded keyboards for a century or more
There's Maltron, Microwriter (who pretty much invented the contemporary chording ASCII computer keyboard) and its weird successors like Twiddler and Charachorder.
But the fundamental problem with one-handed keyboards is that as soon as you only have one hand, you step into specialisation.
People's hands and one-hand abilities are actually quite variable. People who have never had two hands have different hand agility to people who lose a hand in adulthood, for example.
Two-handed keyboards and two-handed typing masks so much of this variability, because you can be a fast and efficient typist even with your hands straying across the keyboard and using only two or three fingers on each hand (say, two on non-dominant hand, two and thumb on dominant).
One-handed keyboards, by contrast, need to be more optimised for individual one-handed typists when any economy of scale is already difficult to achieve.
From the submission title I expected some kind of chorded keyboard. This is just a tiny regular keyboard. What a bummer.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
Interesting. I worry about its ergonomics though as RSI might develops over time after long term usage of that design.
I've been designing my own one-handed keyboard for 3 years.
My main problem is that both of my wrist suffers from RSI and either wrist can ocassionally acts up with different levels of pain. (I also have shoulder problem.)
They can become practically disabled temporarily for a few weeks, or just quite painful for me to avoid using it.
So my desiderata are a bit different from permanently one-handed people.
Interestingly my right wrist is acting up in the last couple weeks so I've been going through a iterative redesign phase recently.
I probably will write up a blog post in the future when I have the final design, I'm going through it briefly below:
Desiderata: (first three are directly from the temporarily and random disabled hand criteria)
- primary used for two hands
- each hand should be able to single-handedly control the computer
- skill transfer from two hand to one hand: since one hand use is oacassional, retraining time should be minimal
- based on the research in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327051hci1101_... which eventually becomes a producten https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/ , the concept of a mirror key becomes a requirement: with the hold of a mirror key, the key at the mirror image position is active. An implementation detail is that the mirror key is a dual function key: on tap it is space, on hold it is mirror. I've implemented other possibility but find that the design in this research is better than others I come up with.
- symmetric keyboard would facilitate this, where many split keyboards already is.
- I must be able to buy them off the shelf. I do not have the skills to design it from scratch, nor do I afford to put more strain to my hand to assemble it from parts.
- ergonomic must be one the of the primary goal of the keyboard, to minimize RSI. Speed is not important at all for example.
- from my empircal experience, split keyboard, espeicially true split keyboard would encourage a better wrist and shoulder ergonomics. Hence I require split keyboards.
Based on these criteria, I bought ZSA Moonlander (QMK based) personally and Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro (ZMK based) for work.
The key concept are that the mirror key can be implemented as a layer, and shift also functionally acts like a mirror.
Thumb cluster are then dual function, where on hold a key could be the mirror key (via layer), another key could be the shift key. And since mirror+shift is needed, you either hold both (which is a bit less pleasant for the thumb), or have another layer serves as the shift-mirror key. Over there, every key is implemented as holding shift+key at mirrored position.
The ZSA training site is useful to iterate this design process: after each iteration I'd train per single hand and see if it works. For example in my earlier design I mainly focused on testing single left hand use and later found it doesn't quite work for single right hand.
Finally, macOS sticky modifier is used to hold modifier with a single hand. I.e. Ctrl+Opt+A becomes Ctrl+Opt, release, A. This is because OSM in QMK cannot handles one-shot of multiple modifiers well. Without doing fancy thing, you need to do Ctrl, release, Opt, release, A.
Same design working across Moonlander and Adv360 is important. Layout differences is not that much thankfully, but firmware difference can be a pain.
Lastly, I recently bought a Silakka54 for the ocassions where the setup hassle of either is too high. Basically either lap use or going to a meeting. I think my current layout design is adaptable to it but I'll see.
..we found an off the shelf keyboard that could work, but we couldn't get it because it was 999 euros. So let's make 7 iterations of our own keyboard with our Formlabs 3d printer, create silicom molds for each key, print legends with our uv printer and we're done. Glad he did though, looks awesome!
About 20 years ago I wrote a little program to turn my own standard keyboard into something I could type on one hand with. It's basically just T9, with every basic letter key bound to two letters instead of one. (The mirror counterpart from the other side of the keyboard.)
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
I am kind of fascinated that some people move the world forward finding a solution even for supposedly dare conditions, while others kill innocent with bombs. This is what I've felt after watching the video.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
holy crap I want one of these, I spend a ton of time with one hand on my drawing stylus and the other on my keyboard and not having to go as far for right-side shortcuts would be great.
This already happened to me because of mouse usage. I’ve longed for a keyboard like this so I cam rest my right arm/hand which has significant damage and pain.
Their video on YouTube, in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vW12gQ4Klc
Okay I must say, the production quality of that video is insane.
Feels like HTX blew up out of nowhere with a ton of long form content at once, but they were huge in Chinese social media already, and finally decided to start translating previous content to english and uploading to Youtube.
My family and I binged a few of their videos. They’re so good
From their youtube channel description:
> Our goal is to create fun and engaging videos.
I wonder whether they are more into video-making or tech.
Yes.
I've been watching them in Chinese for a while. Their video production evolved through the years by leaps and bounds. Their technical skill also skyrocketed. But it started as a channel with technical reviews and some DIY.
If you want to try to watch their videos with AI translation, you can try this: https://space.bilibili.com/163637592 For example, an artificial flower made of memory metal: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gN411M7kh/
I'd watch a video about the making of this video.
Does anyone know which keys/switches out there sound like this one?
It's got a soft cheery non-intrusive sound that I really like compared to the usual louder mechanical keys/switches that I hear in videos.
I recently learned that it's not just the switch, but also the gasket, so the switch plate material, the foam layers and even the keycap itself. I built two different split keyboards recently with the same simple Kailh box red v2 switch and they sound and feel completely different just because of the thickness of the switch plate and the type of keycaps I use.(check this for example https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HIldaxljpzc )
You can check if you find the switches colors here(it looks like an Akko purple pro, but not quite) https://keeb-finder.com/switches
Whereas rtings has a filtering list that also has sound profiles in the review pages.
https://www.rtings.com/keyboard-switch/tools/compare
The sound is described like creamy or thocky.
You can get aula f75 for cheap, arround 50$, there are plenty of sound tests on youtube as it's very popular.
I got that version and I am happy, but if I was to buy a new one I would get the full size f108 because it's important for me to have distance between arrow keys and other keys. And tbh I would just get an apple keyboard or something similarly slim because it's more confortable for me. However for thicc (mechanical switch) keyboards, aula f75 has great specs and sound at a very good price.
I wonder what issues they ran into with using the entire keyboard as a mouse.
I imagine it's uncomfortable to grip since you need to be careful to not press a key doing so. Since you can't rely on fingers much for grip, you could put more force pressing downward with your wrist but that would also add friction with the table. Mice are small enough that you can fit your hand around it, but a keyboard is large and flat.
Put keyboard in perfect ergonomic position on the desk, move mouse, now the keyboard's in a terrible ergonomic position.
Also you have to keep a much bigger area clear for it.
I'm assuming it's too heavy and has too much contact surface (so more friction), making it too hard to glide smoothly.
There's probably something with the position of the hand when you move the mouse as well. At least I seem to be moving mostly the wrist when I use my mouse, meaning that my hand and forearm are not always aligned; without this alignment, I feel there's more strain on the wrist when typing.
I'd also guess fatigue. Pushing around that huge thing constantly
Same, looks like an amazing idea.
These guys are quite well-known in China and have recently started uploading tto Youtube as well. Their videos are quite entertaining and have extremely high production value compared to many other creators.
https://www.youtube.com/@HTXStudio/videos
I love the one about the automated trash cans.
I've found pretty good success just using a planck with layers swaping left/right halves. Its not my daily driver but it becomes surprisingly intuitive to do more with less.
If anyone's interested in something way faster that still lets you go one handed. Take a look at the charachorder. You can type one handed, or easily rip 200wpm with 2 hands. But it does take like a year to get fast. I was coming from a moonlander tho so I was ready
Thank you for sharing, so flipping cool. How do you handle the mouse navigation aspect? That’s one thing missing from my glove80
ZMK on the glove80 has mouse control! I use a modified version of this keymap: https://sunaku.github.io/moergo-glove80-keyboard.html#mouse-...
Essentially, hold down a thumb key and WASD (well, ESDF) moves the mouse.
I want to pull the trigger on this so badly. I've had my eyes on it for years. It seems the best way to increase typing speed is to reduce finger movement via physical modifications to a keyboard.
Does charachorder support Dvorak-like layout mentally? Not a 1-1 but something similar? Like vowels on left hand?
Just leaving some links here because I had been researching this intensively before a planned shoulder surgery:
(Definitely adding this to my list)
Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/
Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
I was maintaining [1] which might be useful to you, but it's become outdated. It doesn't have a filter for one handed keyboards, but some of the "two halves" ones might be appropriate.
(If someone is interested in taking the site over and bringing it up to date, please open an issue.)
[1] https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/
Some research on this topic http://edgarmatias.com/papers/hci96/
On OS X you can achieve this with Keyb, Karabiner Elements, etc. It's also easy to do with a programmable keyboard with ZMK/QMK. I've set up my Kinesis 360 Pro this way, being symmetrical means I can access every key easily. Hardware support for sticky keys also helps quite a bit.
Just being pedantic and off-topic here, but macOS hasn't been called OS X for nearly ten years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#macOS
Some of us still use OS X and haven't made the unnecessary switch to any of the macOS that followed it. :)
It'll always be OSX to me. Fight the branding!
Twiddler is an older design from the first wave of wearable computers, there are newer revisions that are still being sold afaik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiddler
https://www.mytwiddler.com/
The mirror board is an interesting idea as it allows to start with a normal keyboard and one could then switch to a smaller board with the muscle memory trained. I would prefer a different switch key though. I use cap lock as a layer switch on my keyboards. But I will think about it and try out a few things. It could already be useful in situation where I need to keep my hand over the mousepad.
I lost the use of my right hand in '06.
It's amazing how quickly you adapt. I have to put my mouse to the left of my keyboard and whereas before I was a touch typist, I now have to look.
And I can use a standard keyboard without undue hassle.
Yes, having a special keyboard can be limiting in that it’s a pain to cart around to hook up to laptops, etc. and to get an extra in case it fails.
It still could be nice to have something optimized, though. If you ever design one, please share it, because I think you’d get more interest than you’d think.
I began to have interest in developing for everyone (primarily for differences for vision, though difference in hearing, memory, learning also) about 13 years ago, and got little support from the small company I worked for. We had a very color-specific interface, because we were space-limited. Then, wouldn’t you know it, our next manager was red-green colorblind, but it didn’t bother her.
I got jaded about it, learning that basically no one cared enough, and that people just get ignored and struggle with their adaptive devices. This still pisses me off, and I was once thinking heavily about applying a job where I could do something about it, but I don’t have the required background.
With AI, there’s beginning to be almost no excuse for someone not to add first-class support for all types of people into their interfaces and process, but people still continue to design like everyone is a twenty-something y.o. with full hearing, 20/15 full color vision, 130 IQ average, and no memory or learning differences or other modalities.
The frogpad is most likely the best one. So sad to see it’s been discontinued.
I saw the keyboard to be operated by the left hand only and here is my (totally personal and somewhoat adjacent) problem with it.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
And if you like it, picking up any QMK or ZMK compatible keyboard would let you do it in firmware too!
This has changed my life so much for the better. Once I knew about this, I needed look no further.
I'm at the point where I need to redefine cmd-z, x, c, v because my left thumb doesn't want to do that dance anymore. It's been painful for a year, and I finally got to the point of redefining it a couple weeks ago. And the muscle memory is so ingrained that I changed it to option ', 1, 2, 3 and never thought about the idea that my right hand could do it.
Please do your hands a favor and get yourself an ergonomic keyboard! Thumb keys especially alleviate the issues with modifiers that you're describing.
I use a Glove80 as my daily driver right now, although the price tag to build quality ratio is not amazing, so idk if I would recommend it particularly. But there's a massive world of ergo keyboards out there--surely the right one for you exists somewhere!
there's a right-hand version too :)
I was getting hand pain, switched to a Totem keyboard. 38 keys, 6 thumb keys. Column splay & never reaching for number row has greatly helped. 20g actuation means little force needed
You should remap ctrl/cmd (whatever feels better) to caps lock. It'll be much more convenient.
Check out make caps lock great again.
https://github.com/Vonng/Capslock
Use your right hand for meta keys?
Like people trying to find new interfaces for music making [thank god touchscreens!], there are people trying to figure out new hardware for interacting with computers. Thank you dudes!
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
i believe that a crucial feature of good keyboards is that your wrist is stationary. this enables a better form of "muscle memory".
i've been using such a keyboard for two decades.
My personal search ended with the ZSA Moonlander.
Matias has a neat one-handed keyboard. It's quite expensive for what it is, especially considering these days where it's so easy to get a keyboard with remappable keys. There's a simulator on the sidebar at the link, and IMO it's quite intuitive.
https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/
I tried that concept whith my ergodox when i had an arm in a splint, but i couldnt quite get my brain to wrap around it. I could type on the right key, but not press the mirror/switch key at the right moment.
What would have made it easier is if it could infer the right key like an autocorrect
Wow, 595 USD is insanely expensive for literally half a keyboard.
I thought this was a meme for cultured games.
Notice it's for left-handed use.
Someone linked to the video - they have produced a right-handed version.
Left handed people also have a libido to take care of, after all.
The right hand keyboard could finally make me look like Boris from Golden Eye typing away while holding a pen in the left hand
This looks like all you can eat of the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
I'm trying to understand why this isn't a thing already. It seems there would be a market for it; when you consider all the different keyboards shapes and sizes...
A UK company had produced them for decades, which probably serves most injured non-geek users.
https://www.maltron.com/store/p19/Maltron_Single_Hand_Keyboa...
That's actually quite a reasonable price for such a specialized device.
Check out chorded keyboards. They've been a thing for a very long time. At least since early 00s or 90s when I saw them first. They are held one handed have 5 keys and you get different letters by chording multiple keys together.
first consumer device I ever saw was the Microwriter, back in the 1980's .. but court stenographers have been using chorded keyboards for a century or more
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
Court stenography keyboards were not originally spelling out letters, though; they worked in shorthand symbols. I guess they can autoexpand that now.
Microwriter devices produced ASCII directly.
CharaChorder beats all. I can type faster than I can talk
You can just buy a split keyboard and put all the keys on layers on one side.
There's Maltron, Microwriter (who pretty much invented the contemporary chording ASCII computer keyboard) and its weird successors like Twiddler and Charachorder.
But the fundamental problem with one-handed keyboards is that as soon as you only have one hand, you step into specialisation.
People's hands and one-hand abilities are actually quite variable. People who have never had two hands have different hand agility to people who lose a hand in adulthood, for example.
Two-handed keyboards and two-handed typing masks so much of this variability, because you can be a fast and efficient typist even with your hands straying across the keyboard and using only two or three fingers on each hand (say, two on non-dominant hand, two and thumb on dominant).
One-handed keyboards, by contrast, need to be more optimised for individual one-handed typists when any economy of scale is already difficult to achieve.
From the submission title I expected some kind of chorded keyboard. This is just a tiny regular keyboard. What a bummer.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
Interesting. I worry about its ergonomics though as RSI might develops over time after long term usage of that design.
I've been designing my own one-handed keyboard for 3 years. My main problem is that both of my wrist suffers from RSI and either wrist can ocassionally acts up with different levels of pain. (I also have shoulder problem.) They can become practically disabled temporarily for a few weeks, or just quite painful for me to avoid using it. So my desiderata are a bit different from permanently one-handed people.
Interestingly my right wrist is acting up in the last couple weeks so I've been going through a iterative redesign phase recently. I probably will write up a blog post in the future when I have the final design, I'm going through it briefly below:
Desiderata: (first three are directly from the temporarily and random disabled hand criteria)
- primary used for two hands - each hand should be able to single-handedly control the computer - skill transfer from two hand to one hand: since one hand use is oacassional, retraining time should be minimal - based on the research in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327051hci1101_... which eventually becomes a producten https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/ , the concept of a mirror key becomes a requirement: with the hold of a mirror key, the key at the mirror image position is active. An implementation detail is that the mirror key is a dual function key: on tap it is space, on hold it is mirror. I've implemented other possibility but find that the design in this research is better than others I come up with. - symmetric keyboard would facilitate this, where many split keyboards already is. - I must be able to buy them off the shelf. I do not have the skills to design it from scratch, nor do I afford to put more strain to my hand to assemble it from parts. - ergonomic must be one the of the primary goal of the keyboard, to minimize RSI. Speed is not important at all for example. - from my empircal experience, split keyboard, espeicially true split keyboard would encourage a better wrist and shoulder ergonomics. Hence I require split keyboards.
Based on these criteria, I bought ZSA Moonlander (QMK based) personally and Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro (ZMK based) for work.
The mirror key based design is currently at
The key concept are that the mirror key can be implemented as a layer, and shift also functionally acts like a mirror. Thumb cluster are then dual function, where on hold a key could be the mirror key (via layer), another key could be the shift key. And since mirror+shift is needed, you either hold both (which is a bit less pleasant for the thumb), or have another layer serves as the shift-mirror key. Over there, every key is implemented as holding shift+key at mirrored position.The ZSA training site is useful to iterate this design process: after each iteration I'd train per single hand and see if it works. For example in my earlier design I mainly focused on testing single left hand use and later found it doesn't quite work for single right hand.
Finally, macOS sticky modifier is used to hold modifier with a single hand. I.e. Ctrl+Opt+A becomes Ctrl+Opt, release, A. This is because OSM in QMK cannot handles one-shot of multiple modifiers well. Without doing fancy thing, you need to do Ctrl, release, Opt, release, A.
Same design working across Moonlander and Adv360 is important. Layout differences is not that much thankfully, but firmware difference can be a pain.
Lastly, I recently bought a Silakka54 for the ocassions where the setup hassle of either is too high. Basically either lap use or going to a meeting. I think my current layout design is adaptable to it but I'll see.
..we found an off the shelf keyboard that could work, but we couldn't get it because it was 999 euros. So let's make 7 iterations of our own keyboard with our Formlabs 3d printer, create silicom molds for each key, print legends with our uv printer and we're done. Glad he did though, looks awesome!
About 20 years ago I wrote a little program to turn my own standard keyboard into something I could type on one hand with. It's basically just T9, with every basic letter key bound to two letters instead of one. (The mirror counterpart from the other side of the keyboard.)
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
https://github.com/cilphex/QuickBoard
I am kind of fascinated that some people move the world forward finding a solution even for supposedly dare conditions, while others kill innocent with bombs. This is what I've felt after watching the video.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
is it only left-handed?
No
Super cool!
holy crap I want one of these, I spend a ton of time with one hand on my drawing stylus and the other on my keyboard and not having to go as far for right-side shortcuts would be great.
Add eye tracking to replace the track ball please. :-)
It's in Mandarin
"Hi, would you like some RSI?"
"Yes, just the one thank you."
This already happened to me because of mouse usage. I’ve longed for a keyboard like this so I cam rest my right arm/hand which has significant damage and pain.
I am using this mouse because of that, and it works for me:
https://www.contourdesign.com/collection/contour-slidermouse
Iirc this keyboard was custom made for a user that only has one hand. A layered design would be better but harder for the average user to adapt to.