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I've been thinking it would be fun to make a big console-like keyboard with a whole other set of keys above the normal keyboard for things like Greek letters, m

I've been thinking it would be fun to make a big console-like keyboard with a whole other set of keys above the normal keyboard for things like Greek letters, mathematical symbols, additional punctuation marks, etc. If I used OLED keycaps, there could be a big scroll wheel on one side that would select which character set was used for the supplemental keyboard. Simplicity and portability have their uses, but I've always had a fondness for the aesthetics of those complicated-looking industrial control consoles. (The ergonomics are much better, too!)

Pet_Ant 3y ago
Well you could use this PCB and add the Greek letters as extra columns. These are 6 row 9 column. https://keeb.io/products/bfo-9000-keyboard-customizable-full-size-split-ortholinear https://keeb.io/products/bfo-9000-keyboard-customizable-full...
- AdamH12113 3y ago
  I would probably make my own PCB for this if I actually get around to doing it. (I'm an EE, so making custom hardware would be half the fun.) The tricky part for me would be writing a driver. I suspect that's where it would fall apart; to my understanding keyboards (as a standard device type) use a limited number of scan codes and the mapping to characters is done in the OS based on the locale settings. I'm not clear on how hard it is to get e.g. Unicode code points through a USB port -- [1] says there's no standard way, while [2] seems to have hacked something up with alt codes. I suspect that would introduce input lag, though. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37203616/how-do-i-direct-input-unicode-from-a-device-i-want-a-machine-interface-device https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37203616/how-do-i-direct... [2] https://hackaday.io/project/192644-unicode-binary-input-terminal https://hackaday.io/project/192644-unicode-binary-input-term...
fanf2 3y ago
Something like the Hyper 7? https://mechboards.co.uk/products/hyper-7-v4 https://mechboards.co.uk/products/hyper-7-v4
crq-yml 3y ago
You can go lower-tech than the OLED method and have a printed legend with a bank of lights to represent row or column selection. In practice, every time I experiment with "big" control surfaces with a lot of buttons and macros, it doesn't end up being used. The apps where it comes up, I generally move towards a written script, and then I am just doing regular typing again. When you go large there's a penalty in that your arm is moving farther to access things. So, as with GUI vs CLI you end up moving faster with the stenographer's approach of rote sequences with intensive chording. I think there is something underexplored in the idea of adding visible modality to the controls though. We can have more than caps lock, num lock, scroll lock. There should be a genuine "Unicode keyboard" that can emit the codepoints directly without the help of the OS it's talking to.

Pet_Ant 3y ago

Well you could use this PCB and add the Greek letters as extra columns. These are 6 row 9 column. https://keeb.io/products/bfo-9000-keyboard-customizable-full-size-split-ortholinear https://keeb.io/products/bfo-9000-keyboard-customizable-full...

AdamH12113 3y ago
I would probably make my own PCB for this if I actually get around to doing it. (I'm an EE, so making custom hardware would be half the fun.) The tricky part for me would be writing a driver. I suspect that's where it would fall apart; to my understanding keyboards (as a standard device type) use a limited number of scan codes and the mapping to characters is done in the OS based on the locale settings. I'm not clear on how hard it is to get e.g. Unicode code points through a USB port -- [1] says there's no standard way, while [2] seems to have hacked something up with alt codes. I suspect that would introduce input lag, though. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37203616/how-do-i-direct-input-unicode-from-a-device-i-want-a-machine-interface-device https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37203616/how-do-i-direct... [2] https://hackaday.io/project/192644-unicode-binary-input-terminal https://hackaday.io/project/192644-unicode-binary-input-term...

fanf2 3y ago

Something like the Hyper 7? https://mechboards.co.uk/products/hyper-7-v4 https://mechboards.co.uk/products/hyper-7-v4

crq-yml 3y ago

You can go lower-tech than the OLED method and have a printed legend with a bank of lights to represent row or column selection. In practice, every time I experiment with "big" control surfaces with a lot of buttons and macros, it doesn't end up being used. The apps where it comes up, I generally move towards a written script, and then I am just doing regular typing again. When you go large there's a penalty in that your arm is moving farther to access things. So, as with GUI vs CLI you end up moving faster with the stenographer's approach of rote sequences with intensive chording. I think there is something underexplored in the idea of adding visible modality to the controls though. We can have more than caps lock, num lock, scroll lock. There should be a genuine "Unicode keyboard" that can emit the codepoints directly without the help of the OS it's talking to.