Optimus Keyboard With OLED Display Keys

Koskun writes "What appears to be a Russian design company has on their website a keyboard in which the keys are using OLED to display what function the keys represent. The product is Art. Lebedev Studio's Optimus Keyboard. The uses of this could be amazing. They have pictures of layouts for Photoshop and Quake, as well as a QWERTY and Russian. Here's hoping that this will make it to a production model and not just a design model."

Re:How can a Brit get one of these?

[crypto55]

Just get a prepaid credit card from your bank. Get them to input the exact cost of the keyboard, so even if someone steals your CC #, the thing will be empty anyways.

Re:Sorry, poster, editor, and everyone else...

[Scottarius]

Um, nobody claimed it was a product, did you bother to read the post or look past that one page on the website? This is a design concept by a russian company who does industrial design. many of their other design concepts have made it to production.

Re:Virtual Keyboards == LCARS?

[soundofthemoon]

If you read Sternbach and Okuda's tech manual for the Enterprise-D [amazon.com], you'll find the LCARS terminals have an interface that includes not only dynamically shifting graphics but tactile feedback as well. All the soft button graphics and okudagrams are fronted by low-power force fields that let the user touch type, feeling the buttons by sense of touch and getting tactile feedback for button presses, slider movement, etc.

Re:Comment + mirror

[badmammajamma]

That's funny...my LG cell phone is two years old and the OLED's work fine. Different colors fail at different rates. Blue supposedly goes first. In any event, the keyboard could turn itself off when your screensaver is activated to extend the life of the OLEDs. You could probably get 5 years out of the keyboard that way and 5 years is good enough for most people.

Re:Licensing/Implications?

[MynockGuano]

Technology? As far as I can tell, these are just pure concept renderings, with the "Patents Pending" referring to the idea and design, not the actual function. Notice how almost everything else on the site has a date attached to indicate when the product will be available for consumption. Not so with this one.

RGB Screenkeys already exist

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get keys like this already

Check this out.
http://www.rjselectronics.com/cms/html/modules.php ?set_albumName=album18&id=LC16RGB&op=modload&name= gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php [rjselectronics.com]

http://www.rjselectronics.com/cms/html/modules.php ?set_albumName=album18&op=modload&name=gallery&fil e=index&include=view_album.php [rjselectronics.com]

Only price i found was US$66 per key for the 2 colour (RG) version

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price- But "Novel Idea"???

[davidsyes]

I would argue that the overlays shown in the Star Trek USS Enterprise Bridge Blueprints (a copy of which I purchased back in Sept '82) says, "Shows Every Button of Every Station and Their Functions: Complete Set of 10 Accurate 17" x 22" Blueprints of the Primary Bridge", (these drawings were drawn by Michael McMaster) could be considered precursors to this. The first set was drawn October 76. The STTNG console, as described by Michael Okuda and Wil Wheaton are a leap of generations past "Trek Classic."

We've already seen in the Trek Episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" a console control station with keyboard and switches being inserted after Lee Kelso appropriated it from the Vega cracking station. Later, that console style was changed for subsequent episodes, and apparently those changes on-screen seem to import/imply multi-function/demand-assignment control buttons. They're not for typing or composing documents, but they serve the purpose of entering single or a string of command sequences.

Now, in terms of recent Trek incarnations, it is plain and obvious that even tho Trek is fiction, it should not take a giant leap to consider that today's thin film and LCD panels *could* make it feasible to lighten up, slim down, and de-wire these control consoles and make them portable. (Even the USN today and for several years has been using Palm Pilots for crew maintenance of shipboard equipment, and their PDAs could surely use the docking cradles/keyboards...)

Where I am going with this is that between Trek of the 60s and technology of today, and with Trek already having mentioned multifunction keyboard overlays in the 60's drawings and the STTNG blueprints reiterating such things, where the consoles bring up the functions appropriate to security clearance, work tasks, emergencies, etc., this keyboard is not SOOOO terribly unique that it would enjoy a monopoly patent. It would probably face competition just as the innumerable PDAs' makers are facing competition, as so many hammers, socks, hair combs, nit removers, and even computer keyboards and other input devices have met competition. In other words, it's not a terribly large leap or extension of logic to say that a large, heavy, box and Mil-Spec connector cabled keyboard could be reduced to a wireless, lit-key, portable (walk-about) entry station, sending and receiving information via laser, Bluetooth or IR or WI-Fi (whatever works for the compartment, based on the proximity of RFI, EMI, generators, transformers, and such, unless the freq is above or below and therefore unaffected) signals. If there is contention or threat of suits in the court, an "innovator" then could simply create sliding tracks so that all those surplus monochrome LCDs languishing at WeirdStuff Computers could be put to use and maybe reopen a LCD assembly line. LCDs would be able to send several lines

I really do think the keyboard concept they show deserves *some* protection, but not at the preclusion or exclusion of other makers. It's not novel *enough*. It's not *non-obvious* enough. But, I would say that any investors who like the technology should at least give first round of financing and marketing assistance to these guys -- if they are truly the first to put in this much real-world effort. But, once their boards hit the streets and engineering bugs crop up, competitors waiting in the background will quickly exploit that.

These guys had better be prepared to fix their own flaws before their competitors fix them for them and help themselves to their competition while they are at it...

Nice board. Really. I just hope they enlist the help of Open Source developers and embed a Linux-kernel driver or module facility so that the user can assign ANY function to ANY key based on a combination of command sequence and mouse click on a feature of an app interface. It is still too hard for some people to dump the console output or even make a console tell them the hex and human string AND the command with an example. Comparing the console output needs to seamlessly and INTUITIVELY match the KDE key settings.

If they bring this board down to $50, I'd buy one, hands down (pun IS intended...)...