
DataHand - kick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand
======
blhack
If you're reading this, you probably need make a majority of your income using
your hands, and your ability to type things with them.

 _Please_ get yourself a proper keyboard. They keyboard on your laptop, or
even a good external one, is likely destroying your wrists. You're injuring
yourself.

I _highly_ recommend the microsoft sculpt keyboard. It's cheap (for something
that will help you protect your livlihood) and will make a substantial
difference in the longevity of your wrists.

Keyboards should be split. If you're not using a sculpt at the least, please
change that. You'll thank yourself when you're older.

(Currently typing this on a keyboard.io -- it's a lot more expensive than the
sculpt, and a lot of that cost goes to the cool factor of it, imo. The sculpt
is a great keyboard.)

~~~
earenndil
I _highly_ recommend looking for a bowl-shaped keyboard as the second priority
after split. Kinesis advantage is popular, and similarly priced to the
keyboard.io. There are also maltrons, if you're willing to shell out a little
extra dough. There was also a project to make a bowl-shaped split keyboard you
could 3d-print at home. I can't remember the name.

I was also very excited about the moonrim, a project that portended to go a
step further and change the hands' orientation, so they would face inward
instead of down. Sadly, it ended up not taking off.

~~~
bootlooped
The Dactyl is a bowl shaped split keyboard that you can 3D print the case for.
From what I've read it's a very complicated build.

------
melling
There’s an open source DataHand project:

[https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard](https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard)

At CES Samsung demo’ed a “keyboard” using the Selfie camera.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51057261/ces-2020-sam...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51057261/ces-2020-samsung-
s-invisible-keyboard-for-smartphones)

Once we use a camera to track our hands, we can invent other motions to
augment a traditional keyboard.

Also, this keyboard reminds me of DataHand:

[https://www.charachorder.com/](https://www.charachorder.com/)

------
pgroves
I wouldn't want this as a keyboard, I'd want one hanging from my right front
pocket while looking at my phone with my left hand. It's the touchscreen
interfaces that are terrible and need replacing, not the qwerty keyboard. The
backlash against touchscreens has started with interior car controls and I'd
like to see that spread everywhere else.

(Yes I have RSI problems.)

~~~
ttul
How about a pair of gloves that can sense the muscle movements in your fingers
and hands and learn to associate those movements with letters on the keyboard
as you type. Then when you're away from the keyboard, the gloves just use the
model to infer what your movements intend as you "air type". Surely this is
possible with modern machine learning techniques and hardware.

~~~
jodrellblank
The Senseboard virtual keyboard tried to do that a decade ago:
[https://sandipsandilya.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/senseboard-v...](https://sandipsandilya.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/senseboard-
virtual-keyboard/) and the AirType as well a bit more recently
[https://www.ohgizmo.com/airtype-keyless-keyboard-
future/](https://www.ohgizmo.com/airtype-keyless-keyboard-future/)

------
kick
Previously, on _Hacker News_ :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144044)

Very interesting 63-comment thread from 6 years ago.

~~~
jodrellblank
2014? That dates how long I've had this Sidewinder X4 keyboard from my reply
there, and roughly how long my experience with the Datahand and Plover has put
me off buying another strange or unusual keyboard. Specifically the "Truly
Ergonomic"/Cleave keyboard which came up in the last year or so for another
round of production, and when I googled it found a review by Xah Lee [1] - who
no longer uses it - and this guy I'm sure you'll recognise -
[https://www.sacrideo.us/not-your-typical-
keyboard/](https://www.sacrideo.us/not-your-typical-keyboard/) \- who seems to
no longer use it, and both previously owned a Datahand too [2].

I wonder what the incidence of people continuing using their strange keyboards
long term, vs. raving about them and then not using them after a few months,
really is. And what happened to the guy who bought my Datahand and paid
international shipping to get it.

[1]
[http://xahlee.info/kbd/truly_ergo_keyboard_cleave.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/truly_ergo_keyboard_cleave.html)

[2]
[http://xahlee.info/kbd/datahand.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/datahand.html)

------
Birch-san
There's a bunch of hackers trying to reverse-engineer and open-source the
DataHand here (most recent reply was yesterday):

[https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0)

I've had a couple of DataHands (and still keep one under my bed). It's a real
marvel. For certain repetitive strain injuries: it's the only thing that
helps.

I'm using regular keyboards now, and I'm grateful that I can. But I look
forward to the day when anybody who needs one can find one.

------
bigjimmyk3
In the late 90s I had a co-worker who managed to wrangle one of these at our
office. I think he tried it for a few weeks and then returned it. I solved
most of my RSI problems at the time by switching to dvorak.

~~~
arafa
I had a very similar experience with RSI and Dvorak. It was getting pretty bad
and many years later, my wrists are holding up great. Maybe I'd have learned
Colemak if I learned today, maybe not.

~~~
Symbiote
I used Dvorak since 2005.

After one look at Coleman / Colemak, and typing "he" (the second most common
digraph in English) I'm sticking with Dvorak.

------
reality_inspctr
Bob Moog and John Eaton designed a multi touch synthesizer with a similar
design vision. [http://experimentalsynth.com/eaton-moog-multi-touch-
keyboard...](http://experimentalsynth.com/eaton-moog-multi-touch-keyboard/)

From what I hear and having attempted to play one myself, it’s mentally taxing
and hard to express artistically.

------
crtlaltdel
i distinctly remember this product, not because i used one...but because my
friends and i learned about it on compuserve! same night was my first use of
mosaic. prior all my “internet” use was actually either muds via telnet or
dialin bbs.

~~~
crtlaltdel
to be clear, after we saw that we were all positive that Blade Runner was
going to happen before we graduated middleschool...

------
pomatic
cykey.co.uk is an interesting option - very easy to learn (I did it in an
afternoon), but suffers from a couple of shortcomings: 1) there's no dedicated
backspace key; 2) the characters regularly used by programmers are awkward to
get at in some cases. Both of these issues could be addressed, and I'm
experimenting with my own build which will use two rows of 5 keys, the upper
row providing access to key layers + BS.

PS. It's also IR, not bluetooth - but thats a trivial DIY fix.

------
brandonmenc
I used to own one of these. It was utterly unusable.

Looked cool, though.

