[HN Gopher] Rotary Keyboard
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Rotary Keyboard
Author : christoph-heiss
Score : 407 points
Date : 2022-12-24 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (squidgeefish.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (squidgeefish.com)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| LOL. That is a crazy project, but I smiled al the way through
| reading about it. Its going to be slow going doing numeric key
| input though. :-)
| layer8 wrote:
| It might motivate someone to implement an IME for Roman number
| input.
| ChewFarceSkunk wrote:
| Nice, but not hardcore enough! Here's the real deal:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| The best part of that is that they actually made a bit of a
| wheel-centric UI just for this gag.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| "everything is just a few hundred clicks away" -
| unintentionally hilarious!
| college_physics wrote:
| The slowness of the rotary dial might be actually a strength in
| certain use cases, like when its critical to get the number right
| the first time around. Consider attaching it to a Bloomberg
| terminal to eliminate the "fat finger" problem.
| euroderf wrote:
| No more mistaken multi-billion-dollar bank transfers and stock
| trades !
| HALtheWise wrote:
| Nice project!
|
| > Due to debouncing troubles, it seems to be double-reading each
| pulse. At some point I should throw a scope on it to confirm what
| the problem is, but it works quite adequately as-is. (My first
| try only had a 10ms delay, which empirically resulted in
| septuple-reading each pulse...)
|
| Needless to say, this is _not_ the canonical way to count pulses.
| A more typical and accurate loop would look like
| if digitalRead(pin): count +=1 # register the pulse
| sleep(0.01) # debouncing delay while
| digitalRead(pin): # wait for end of pulse pass
| sleep(0.01) # debouncing delay
| [deleted]
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm more used to "while pin hot in the last devounceDelay
| consider held" approach. This double sleep method has a larger
| minimum for a given debounce delay and triggers multiple
| presses if you get any contact drops at all during a long hold.
| Not sure if there are other upsides I'm missing though.
| blamazon wrote:
| Had a chuckle at "the rotary dial is mightier than the number
| keys"
| JadoJodo wrote:
| Part of me had hoped that this was some sort of insane mechanical
| keyboard, where every single key was on the rotary.
| axiolite wrote:
| That's been done:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
| leetrout wrote:
| "Everything is just a few hundred clicks away"
|
| I am glad you shared the video because it was exactly what I
| thought of when I read the parent comment.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Let's see, for 104 keys 3/4" wide, the fully-rotary keyboard
| would have a circumference of 78" and a diameter of ~25". At
| that size, it should probably be oriented like a steering
| wheel.
| defanor wrote:
| The holes on my rotary phone are about 1 cm. One can make
| them nested, since it would have to be custom anyway:
| starting with the diameter of, say, 3 cm, adding a bit more
| than 1 cm on each side (3 cm, 4.5 cm, etc), and assuming that
| at least floor (pi * (1.5 + 2.5 * n - 2) / 1.5) keys fit in
| the nth such nested ring (1.5 + 2.5 * n is the outer
| diameter, - 2 is there since the holes won't be on the outer
| diameter, / 1.5 cm is to leave some space around them; that's
| not meant to be optimal, just a quick estimate), that'd yield
| 101 holes/keys with 6 rings, with the outer diameter of 1.5 +
| 2.5 * 6 = 16.5 cm for the last one. That's a rather small
| keyboard.
|
| Edit: nested rings would also work for modifier keys.
|
| Edit 2: fixed the formula.
| tdeck wrote:
| There were a bunch of cheap typewriters that worked this way,
| collectively called index typewriters. Here's an example, the
| simplex:
|
| https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/simplex.html
| layer8 wrote:
| It doesn't make sense for the modifier keys to be on the rotary
| dial, but the rest you code encode by a pair of dials (for
| 10x10 keys). Labeling would be a challenge.
|
| I wonder which of Emacs and Vim would have the advantage here.
| benj111 wrote:
| A modifier dial would be cool. You could have capslock for X
| number of seconds.
|
| Vim could have a mode dial. Which mode should be the default
| is possibly the thing that flame wars are made of though.
| 0xmarcin wrote:
| Rotary phones where used with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch - so they have very
| simple interface - just generate the number of pulses that is
| either N or 10-N (I don't remember exactly which one is right).
| There is also a nice back-story about how it was invented.
|
| This is a nice DIY project, but its practicality is questionable.
| Choosing a number on rotary phones is very slow, as you need to
| wait til the wheel returns to its start position.
| stavros wrote:
| It's N, from what I recall from my rotary mobile:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/
| tdeck wrote:
| In New Zealand it was 10-N!
| ismokedoinks wrote:
| Not sure practicality is the goal--Being inconvenient might
| actually be the intent.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| You could redesign the rotary dial to return to zero much, much
| faster with shorter pulses and smaller intervals between them
| given advances in high frequency signal counting.
| veganjay wrote:
| This is so cool, especially for those of us who've used rotary
| phones.
|
| I'd like to see a video of a google voice or other call made
| using the rotary number pad :)
| kmoser wrote:
| Just use a rotary cell phone:
| https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html
| no_time wrote:
| Tangent, does anyone know where can I buy a small mechanical
| ringer module like that? I'm probably feeding the wrong terms
| into ebay but the best it can do vintage doorbells.
| layer8 wrote:
| It would be fun for it to support texting using T9 on the
| dial.
| melling wrote:
| We had a rotary phone when I was young.
|
| What would be really cool is to see some version of "Minority
| Report" actually work in my lifetime.
|
| https://youtu.be/PJqbivkm0Ms
|
| Sort of like people who lived during the invention of the
| airplane and got to see humans land on the moon
| nordsieck wrote:
| > What would be really cool is to see some version of
| "Minority Report" actually work in my lifetime.
|
| I suspect that that will come swiftly once VR headsets get
| good[1] enough to be used as a replacement for a
| laptop/monitor setup. I don't personally have a device, but
| people who do have told me that the resolution and weight
| just aren't there yet.
| greenbit wrote:
| An interesting twist on numeric entry, for sure.
| rgoulter wrote:
| What an impressive project.
|
| One thing this design demonstrates about the standard keyboard
| design:
|
| - In order to disallow using the number row, a giant 10U keycap
| is placed over the number keys. This deliberately restricts
| usage. It's funny because it's unexpected.
|
| - 3 rows down, you've got a giant 6U keycap. But, most keyboards
| just look like this, even though it's as impractical as this joke
| keycap above.
| lencastre wrote:
| Click wheel FTW
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a fun hack!
| memling wrote:
| The friction stir weld!
| pedrovhb wrote:
| That's awesome. Given the effort that went into it, it's kind of
| a shame to use a cheap $10 board as a base. I think it'd be
| worthwhile to spend a bit more and get a keyboard running QMK,
| which also saves the headache of jerry-rigging an Arduino to
| control the thing and the complications that come with it (USB,
| custom logic in the firmware, etc).
| paulkrush wrote:
| Test it on kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is insane. Fun to watch them.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| A gentle reminder that nothing is intuitive.
| benj111 wrote:
| No.
|
| I recently noticed on my local canal the mile markers show
| how many miles you are from the place youre traveling from.
|
| This is the Leeds Liverpool canal. So as you travel to Leeds
| it says Liverpool with increasing miles.
|
| From the pov of the Liverpool side of the sign being the
| Liverpool side this makes sense, and on a barge it's easy to
| look back to see how many miles to Leeds. But to modern eyes
| it's completely backwards.
|
| Even traffic signs are 'intuitive'!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > While one could use a pin-change interrupt, the timescale is so
| large that busy-waiting is acceptable.
|
| You should never use interrupts for this sort of input with lots
| of inherent switching noise. At best you could wait for one
| interrupt then disable it while polling in a debounce routine.
| Interrupts are a red flag that someone hasn't investigated what
| the switching is doing to their micro.
| bilekas wrote:
| Definitely a fun project and great read! I only worry it may
| catch on with the hipsters and we'll be hearing the rotary bells
| in cafes soon.
| darkhorn wrote:
| Apple had wheel keyboard https://youtu.be/9BnLbv6QYcA
| oritsnile wrote:
| The most interesting for is the USB 3.0 connection, on the hub.
| Didn't know the lanes are totally independent.
| anyfactor wrote:
| I NEED a rotary dial as a fidget toy.
| _tom_ wrote:
| eBay's got plenty of them. With or without the phone.
| anyfactor wrote:
| Checking them right now. Thanks.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Time to use it with a SIP client :D
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