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Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard
- insane_dreamer 4y agoGenius! Next up: Oauth plug-in so you can authenticate with your own unique “dance”. Reminds me of the OA.
- fheisler 4y agoOoh yes, I wonder if you could use it like gait recognition to define your own not-easy-to-replicate motion. My dance is my password...
- worthless-trash 4y agoI can imagine banks using this as 2FA for the next generation.
- darylteo 4y agoAnd a new speedcoding e-sport is born!
- elif 4y agoPlease consider support for emacs chording with Ctrl and meta/alt. Perhaps DDR-esque foot placement?
- neom 4y agoI couldn't figure out why he was wearing all the French gear, the author isn't french...! I presume it's a nod to the Frenchman, Claude Chappe, who invented Flag semaphore, the system he build it with. @fheisler, if you happened to see this, please let me know if I'm right! :)
- fheisler 4y agoHm which gear was particularly French? I was just channeling 80s aerobics workout in the intro, or the style of the songs played in the video.
- failrate 4y agoYour wristbands look like the French flag.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoAnd the Netherlands flag, so…
- fheisler 4y ago'Murica is the only red, white, and blue! ...Actually they just happened to be the first cheap bands that came up on Amazon.
- neom 4y agoIn the gif on your github, all the "workout" gear colours are blue white and red, the colours of the French flag. If it was a happenstance, maybe you can just say it was on purpose, so...er.. I don't need to tell my therapist I'm reading too much into everything again?
- rodelrod 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flags_with_blue,_red,_and_white_stripes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flags_with_blue,_red,_...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 1-6 4y agoA solution looking for a problem indeed!
- patrickwalton 4y agoPair this with Superhuman and you'll have Gmail Motion (April Fools product) in the flesh! https://youtu.be/9KEcfP_CWVo https://youtu.be/9KEcfP_CWVo
- bealuga 4y agoI love this oh my god.I didn't know what I was expecting by a "full body keyboard", but I'm sold.
- radiorental 4y agoI'm reusing this for our next hackathon, this will be an awesome & fun way to write PromQL queries
- harrylove 4y agoThere’s probably quite a few kindergartens that could benefit from having something like this installed.
- jsrcout 4y agoMagnificently pointless, in the finest traditions of the old-time hackers. Sir, I salute you.
- junon 4y agoThis is so dorky. I love it.
- fsiefken 4y agoYou could get a slight speedup by matching letter frequency with easiest/fastest semaphore, similar as to morse code and dvorak typing do it. You loose compatibility with the rest of the world though, but if you are only using it for personal typing it's not a problem. You could also do a braille mapping instead of using semaphor so braille readers can get a workout. A good way to play interactive fiction games: X, I, U, D, N, S, W, E, Z, OPEN, CLOSE, GIVE, ASK/TELL ABOUT https://www.microheaven.com/ifguide/step3.html https://www.microheaven.com/ifguide/step3.html
- m3kw9 4y agoHe’s got to have a peace sign with tongue moving back and forth as a gesture as well
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- waltbosz 4y agoCool project. I've always wanted to learn the semaphore alphabet, and I'm interested in alternative keyboards. The lifeguards at the beach I visit use it to communicate to each other from between lifeguard stands, and I'm always curious what they saying. Plus, I thought it would be fun to be able to communicate with them in their own secret(ish) language.
- kqr 4y agoIt's highly likely they are communicating in a shorthand that isn't meaningful to you even if you could read the individual letters!
- breischl 4y agocommand: lift left leg to ~horizontal thigh control: lift right leg to ~horizontal thigh So command+control => midair splits?
- eCa 4y agoThat’s a good use case for Sticky keys[1] for able-bodied people that wish to remain so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_keys
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- redkoala 4y agoA sign-language based keyboard controller would be immediately useful.
- dhritzkiv 4y agoI'd love to see this used to play QWOP
- fheisler 4y agoI tried that out! It was honestly hard to tell a difference, I'm already so bad at it...
- shaunxcode 4y agodo you need 3 people to do a choreographed emacs key chord? I guess it could finally make peer programming necessary.
- ashton314 4y agoAnd I thought I had RSI…
- khnorgaard 4y agoThis is superbly geeky and I love it! Unless you are missing an arm or a leg. How would one go about adding accessibility to a project like this?
- fheisler 4y agoMy face-computer interface is probably a better bet if you're working with fewer than four limbs but have full facial control: https://github.com/everythingishacked/CheekyKeys https://github.com/everythingishacked/CheekyKeys The next version will be more customizable, so you can create whatever gestures you'd prefer with whatever means at your disposal!
- aidenn0 4y agoFun Fact! the "peace sign" was originally created a superposition of "N" and "D" semaphores as it was a logo for Nuclear Disarmament. [edit] I originally put U+262E in my comment, but apparently HN strips some unicode characters?
- user3939382 4y agoReminds me of the (was it family guy?) parody of the starship/trek captain who makes crazy contortions as he speaks.
- dekhn 4y agoCool idea. I did something similar- a whiteboard with various magnetic icons that were original SVGs. I trained an object detector to recognize the different icons and extract that into a data structure depending on the icon orientation and relative positioning. I wanted to patent that as a brand new way of programming- visual programming with real objects. Never went anywhere with it.
- fencepost 4y agoIf you haven't done so already, see if you can connect with someone on the music side, particularly someone used to working with programmable sound buttons. The combination of your setup plus programmed sound macros could result in something fascinating.
- mft_ 4y agoIt could certainly be used to trigger samples, combined with a looper[0][1]? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBwRfQbXkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBwRfQbXkg [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc_SlqwtUXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc_SlqwtUXI
- fheisler 4y agoI've got some musical + basic audio background and would love to turn this into a musical instrument or sample generator, just haven't worked out the best way to translate motion to sound yet. Any sound engineers or DJs who want to collaborate, reach out!
- fortylove 4y agoThe peak mechanical keyboard will be when we teach robots to accept voice dictation and they then write what we say using these motions.
- callamdelaney 4y agoMy vim experience is going to be more ergonomic than ever, plus after I deliver this project I'm gonna be ripped.
- timetraveller26 4y agoThis is so cool. Any idea of the state of the art to do this with hand gestures? I wanted to do something like this but in the style of the Naruto seals used to perform ninjutsu.
- fheisler 4y agoI've seen lots of examples of interpreting sign language, but not general/customizable gestures. Should be very doable though!
- kian 4y agoI always wanted to be able to type while I’m dancing! Although maybe not have what I am typing dictate the choreography… still, amazing work!
- 1letterunixname 4y ago[flagged]
- Vecr 4y agoI had an idea for putting a split keyboard on the cummerbund of a reasonably standard body armor vest, right to each side of the front plate. The display could either be a vest mounted flip out phone (very simple) or it could be displayed on the helmet mounted IVAS system or injected into the front of an image amplification tube. I doubt many people would use it though, due to the learning curve.
- _448 4y agoHence proved, smart engineers have sense of humour too! That demo video showing printing of "Hello World!" is so funny :)
- eggy 4y agoIf this came out in 1978 when I first started to program, I would be in better shape than most current-day crossfitters!
- scrumper 4y agoI don't have anything constructive to add except, well done! Total commitment to the bit, investment far in excess of anything reasonable, great execution, full of whimsy, and it's grounded in ancient tech. Hilarious and also deeply impressive, and you pulled it off with a young kid in the house.
- daemon_9009 3y agowhat is the practical use of this?
- daemon_9009 3y ago[dead]
- kieto 4y agoThe YouTube video is even funnier: https://youtu.be/h376W93gQq4 https://youtu.be/h376W93gQq4
- stronglikedan 4y agoSerious Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio vibes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJexftddVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJexftddVw EDIT: I just realized that it's the same guy behind this gem, that I randomly ran across a few months back! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q-BQ2Q_pqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q-BQ2Q_pqI (I Made a Remote Lie Detector to Test Zuckerberg's Pulse)
- amadeuspagel 4y agoThe way that the "hello world" in the youtube video is synced with music made me think that it would be awesome to make music this way, to translate the body movements to sound. A kind of reverse dancing — rather then dancing to the music, the music would be created to your dance.
- munchler 4y ago"My glutes were burning from having had to file my taxes earlier." Definitely a brand new sentence.
- FredPret 4y agoSurprising since tax season makes my glutal area hurt every time
- schabby 4y agoReminds me of Eurythmics from back in the day when I attended a Rudolf Steiner school.
- arendtio 3y agoThat alphabet would probably be easier to chain.
- dotancohen 4y agoEurythmics and not the Village People?
- severak_cz 4y agoEurythmy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurythmy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurythmy
- iamwil 4y agoOh, this is like the April Fool's day joke, Google Motion, back in 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20151025130300/http://www.google.com/mail/help/motion.html https://web.archive.org/web/20151025130300/http://www.google... Where you type email with your full body.
- orangepanda 4y agoMy first thought was Dance Dance Authentication https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/03/30/stack-overflow-unveils-next-steps-computer-security/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/03/30/stack-overflow-unveils...
- fheisler 4y agoIronically this project also first got covered by Hackaday on April 1, so quite a few people thought it was only another prank.
- cthemsley 4y agoWould love to see someone take this and use it to beat dark souls.
- darylteo 4y agoMmmm it wouldn't be too different from using a DDR pad I suppose?
- hombre_fatal 4y agoHere's someone playing Dark Souls with poses through a Kinect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xak0l2-Zg9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xak0l2-Zg9w
- sethammons 4y agoI was lamenting the use of "semaphore" but wikipedia supports them: > Semaphore (lit. 'apparatus for signalling'; from Ancient Greek σῆμα (sêma) 'mark, sign, token', and Greek -φόρος (-phóros) 'bearer, carrier')[1] is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore I was only familiar with: > [A semaphore] is a variable or abstract data type used to control access to a common resource by multiple threads and avoid critical section problems in a concurrent system. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)
- jxramos 4y agosame here with my initial first take on the name. I was doing a internet search for something recently and realized this spirit of taking an existing word and deliberately overloading it in a different context rather than coining a new term with a distinct phonemes is slowly mucking up our language to disambiguate by keywords alone. It's hard work to invent new words and I get it can slow the adoption or recognition of something if the name hasn't been settled yet and it's tempting to just skip over that whole process by leapfrogging out of the mental wrestling by coopting an existing word and append a new definition to it. Earlier in life I used to lament the lack of uniqueness to words and the existence of synonyms but later began appreciate the overlap because having the ability to talk about something with a variety of phonemes seemed to help create some conceptual distance in a conversation that was otherwise obscured by close sounding words. But this almost lazy reuse of existing words, I'm still not sure how I feel about it now that I'm aware of its costs.
- shakow 4y agoAnd the programming semaphore comes from the semaphore used as train signal to ensure that two trains are not using the same track segment simultaneously.
- surfsvammel 4y agoSemaphores are also used on shooting ranges.
- LoveMortuus 4y agoI wonder if there are any good keyboards that are part of trousers, but that are also hidden, you know not immediately obvious that you've got a keyboard on your trousers. Then you could have a computer in the pocket or a bag and a HUD! That could be very cool!
- banana_giraffe 4y agoI had a coworker write a little app to vibrate with Morse code at incoming messages, and turn the entire screen into a single button that he could tap out replies. It worked well enough.
- daliusd 4y agoYou can integrate 30% or smaller wireless keyboard (with Elite-C) in your trousers IMHO. This would address "good" part (think something like this https://www.tzcl.me/blog/rae-dux https://www.tzcl.me/blog/rae-dux but without PCB and wired using wires). At least I use adux keyboard of similar size daily. Or you can go even smaller with something like this https://artsey.io/ https://artsey.io/ but I am not sure if this could be considered good. Next part would be concealing it - kailh low profile are too high IMHO for pants. There are switches that are even lower but most probably this might not work. I guess captive touch sensors might be solution but I am not sure if they would work well as keyboard. I guess some art would help concealing as well. Still I don't feel this would be really comfortable to type on.
- flir 4y agoJust as an fyi, that second device is a chorded keyboard. I only mention it because the name's not on the page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard
- flir 4y agoI thought you were just pleased to see me.
- serf 4y agothe only keyboard that requires supportive underwear rather than a palm rest.
- ivolimmen 4y agoI am mostly impressed by the fact that he can keep a straight face while signaling. Impressive!
- fheisler 4y agoIt honestly takes all my focus and concentration to remember the signals quickly. That's the look of 100% dedication to a silly task!
- whiplash451 4y agoI am curious to know how far you take this in terms of it becoming second nature. As in, maybe after days and weeks of practice, you can type stuff effortlessly ? How far away from effortless mastery are you?
- fheisler 4y agoIt's always going to be plenty of physical effort! In terms of the mental overhead: there are some letters/motions like R, F, D that just feel second-nature already from lots of practice and more 'obvious' positions, but I still have to think about most of them. A few letters still trip me up, like remembering M versus S (mirror images). I'd love to find a seasoned signalman to get their take.
- whiplash451 4y agoMakes sense. I find your project incredibly cool. And your video is awesome. Well done!
- Version467 4y agoI love everything about this. The idea, the implementation, the demo video. My day is better for having seen it.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoMissed an opportunity to do YMCA
- nathias 4y agoamazing, soon we will all be just prompt wizards casting our spells using arcane gestures
- eschneider 4y agoWe call those bash scripts where I come from. =:8)
- s1mplicissimus 4y agoThe idea of "dancing your name" seems to have caught on in an unexpected way. Love the project idea, the outfit worn for the demo video AND the fact that the "!" sign seems to be a "shaking fingers" power pose :D
- rcarmo 4y agoLooks exhausting, but loved the exclamation marks!
- smokel 4y agoThis reminded me of the esoteric programming language Bodyfuck (2010) by Nik Hanselmann: http://nik.works/project/bodyfuck/ http://nik.works/project/bodyfuck/
- muyuu 4y agonext time I'm spastic I'll tell my wife I'm actually working in my next project
- schneems 4y ago“You can’t code and workout at the same time” Oh yeah, watch me
- alex-moon 4y agoEvery now and again I try and explain to non-coders why a software engineer might build something "just to see if I can" - and that a lot of the software they use probably started out as such. The video captures that so well!
- landswipe 4y agoThis guy Chucks Norris.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- asimpletune 4y agoThe jump for space and the jazz hands for exclamation mark are pure gold
- pjio 4y agoNot what I expected, but not disappointed either.
- wodenokoto 4y agoThat’s pretty fun. Reminds me of the creativity with Xbox Kinect back in the day.
- fheisler 4y agoAuthor here! Pleasant surprise to find my project at the top of HN this morning with such positive feedback :) I'm happy to answer any questions or hear suggestions for future tweaks. Planning to make this into a customizable full-body game controller as well.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoI loved this! Should be customizable so that twerking also allows you to double letters :)
- spit2wind 4y agoI hope the video was dramatized and that you didn't actually hurt yourself! Rather than type every letter, a more efficient system is to represent sounds with keys. This is how stenography works. Each stoke of the keys is mapped to a series of characters; a letter, a grouping (such as 'sh' or 'ing'), or a complete phrase. Using such a system would allow one motion, for example for 'b', to map to a whole word, such as 'be'. Something as simple as that would reduce your risk of injury by something like 50%. A major difference between stenography and typing is that steno is chorded: the signal is sent when the keys are released, not when they are depressed. I'm not sure how that would work with the full body. Check out the OpenStenoProject for more about steno. Their community would probably enjoy discussing a full body steno theory (if they haven't already) . Take care and thanks for all the effort that went into producing the video! It was a lot of fun :)
- fheisler 4y agoInteresting, I wonder if you could make a BodyChord or FaceChord setup using steno... Can you actually write code using a steno keyboard - as in, full access to all the usual symbols and modifiers - or would it just be for letters and basic punctuation?
- michaelmior 4y agoThere are plenty of chorded keyboards that are programmable enough to allow use of whatever symbols you want or need when programming. The Charachorder One is one example https://www.charachorder.com/products/charachorder-one https://www.charachorder.com/products/charachorder-one
- markus_zhang 4y agoFinally mom won't worry about my health anymore! Programmers we dance to program! That's a lot of calories burned I think.
- freethejazz 4y agoStep aside, Dvorak
- jimmySixDOF 4y agoThis is straight up awesome and must watch video just for the lolz. But there is a thread to pull on here in terms of tangible user interfaces and the replacement of keyboards as a traditional input system. Meta's CTRL-Labs (ex Myo Armband) are working on EMG where just signaling to your muscles can trigger keyboard strokes and the bandwidth is faster than fingers or so they say. There are several other R&D efforts in that direction from BCIs to free space gesture detection through different flavors of computer vision and sensor fusion. Mr Everything Is Hacked is doing it here just for the sheer joy of the journey but there are serious reasons to play around with qwerty alternatives.
- pavel_lishin 4y agoHow's that research going? It would be interesting to be able to "type" on any surface, just by pretending there's a keyboard in front of me.
- mncharity 4y ago> "type" on any surface There's Tap Strap, and not-yet-released TapXR, though they are more chording keyboards than "keyboard in front of me".
- mncharity 4y ago> replacement of keyboards Or augmentation of keyboards: wand/stylus; 3D finger tracking; multitouch tablet. Extending rather than dumpstering existing refined comfortable power. My laptop used to have three extra fold-out cameras for TFA-like mediapipe games. Though tech resets are an opportunity to escape trap deadends, to "do better this time" - that thinkpad keyboard was a crippled and crippling 2-key rollover. And sensor fusion with diverse latencies (keypress vs pose-tracked video) is nontrivial - complex event processing with backtrackable app state. LLMs with UI/HID "languages" will be such fun!
- mclightning 4y agoSeeing OpenCV in this post-ML world, gave me some nostalgia /teary eyed emoji
- jxf 4y agoCompletely impractical and completely wonderful fun. Thank you for your work, OP! I love seeing projects full of joy, mischief, and wonder for the power of computing.