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."

a couple of questions before buying

[yagu]

Wow! Looked at the pictures, very attractive!

So, eye-candy aside:

• Is it reliable (how many keystrokes is it designed for lifetime?)?
• Is it comfortable, is the key travel and feel well done?
• (for me), Is it reasonably quiet? (I'd really like to find a nice silent keyboard, but at least it has to be about 20 db quieter than the monolith I'm banging away on right now (at a friend's house).)
• last, but for me most importantly, are the pretty pictures on the left-hand column of keys configurable? There's no way in Hell I'm ever buying a keyboard with a picture of the IE icon on one of its keys! For less expensive keyboards I satisfied and content with ripping out the Microsoft menu keys (though it's landed me in hot water at work a couple of times), but for something this (probably) expensive, those pictures had better be configurable!

Virtual Keyboards == LCARS?

[bc90021]

It will be handier and handier to have virtual keyboards, and in fact, they obviously already exist [alpern.org].

However, soon enough, as with other inventions, it just may be that we get a glass panel in front of us, and the display/input conforms to the user and his/her function, instead of the other way around. ;)

Comment + mirror

[winkydink]

It looks like most of their portfolio makes it into production, but I can't
help but wonder just how much a keyboard like this would cost?

Also, OLED's have a short life. 1-2 years.

Mirror here [networkmirror.com]

International users and public terminals

[ScArE2100]

This is an amazing idea for international users at public terminals. Just sit down and select your character set and you're off and running with a keyboard taylored to your needs. I forsee this being in airports and trainstations; even somewhat computer illiterate people could use it to be able to seemlessly type in there language.

Although the price might render this idea problematic...

Lottsa uses for this

[Mr. Cancelled]

But the one that intrigues me the most is the fact that I share a keyboard between a Mac and a PC using Synergy, and the keys aren't mapped identically between both machines. This would be very handy to have my keyboard visually show me what's what, dependant upon which computer has the keyboards focus at that time.

Not to mention that I'm a shortcut junkie, and a visual kinda guy... This has "productivity increase" written all over it!

But the bad news is that the keyboard appears to be just a prototype at this point. Hopefully demand will quickly bring it to market soon! (preferably at less than $200 - It looks kinda expensive). There's a rather good thread on it over at digg, from earlier today.

Would be great if the OS...

[losman]

...could drive the OLEDs. So if I switched from Firefox to OpenOffice the keys would automatically adjust themselves. This way we could leave to the application developers to interface their apps to something in the OS. This would be the future version of creating icons for your application or an extension of it.

neat, but...

[greywire]

This would have to be ungodly expensive for a keyboard. OLED's are definately the way to go, though, because LCD's (especialy in color) are way to bulky and expensive (each key would need a light source, lcd, and a driver chip). With an OLED, if I am not mistaken, you can have the whole display and drivers on one piece. No glass panels, no backlight.

Still, until OLEDs are in mass (*MASS*) production, I dont see producing a keyboard like this for a reasonable price for some time yet.

For all the people thinking "OH NO! this would be way to confusing! Bad, bad idea for UI design..".. what's the problem? We have windows full of icons now. What's the difference in putting some icons onto a keyboard? With something like photoshop I could see this being a real time saver. And I bet you will start to use and remember keyboard shortcuts much more often with this, since you only need to look, where now you have to hunt around and find out what the shortcut is..

Hmmm... well...

[lurch_mojoff]

I don't want to dis the (obviously) pretty good designers of Art. Lebedev Studio, but do we have a proof that this is even a prototype? For all I see it may just as well be a great idea with a good design, created in Maya (or whatever). Prety picture != real (or even conceivable) product.

Keyboard design needed something like this for a long time now, but will it ever become a real market product?

Re:a couple of questions before buying

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

(for me), Is it reasonably quiet?

All quiet keyboards I've ever had always turned out to be utter crap. Right now, I'm banging away on a IBM Modem M keyboard [scoutingaround.com] that is still doing fine after years of typing (obviously) but also coffee spilling (hot and cold), heavy banging, hurling across the room, and sitting on. Some of the heavily used keys are so worn out that the plastic surface feels smooth and the etching has gone, but it's still doing fine. These things sure were made to last.

I've long since forgotten about the incredible racket noises it makes. My cat loves the feel and clicks when he stretches on it though, apparently.

Applications beyond computing

[Spy der Mann]

Anyway. I've always thought of a musical MIDI keyboard with glowing keys.

Why? You give it the music, and it can teach you to play a specific piece of music. Just put your hands on the glowing keys, and ta-da! :)

OLED?

[Pyrosz]

I would think that the new e-paper technologies would be better suited as they maintain the image with the power off. This would enable the keyboard to only use power while the keys are changed (or if they are animated), and of course the wireless portion would use power.

If they get these out on the market (using e-paper tech) for under $300 CAN I would buy one asap.

WoW - need one of these in Azeroth!

[kingjosh]

WoW would be great with this! Chuckled a bit when I saw the "Quake" idea, first thing I thought of was binding the keys to macros on World of Warcraft, this would just be so much better than an action bar and/or remembering what you mapped all your keys to.

I'd definitely pay for this keyboard, even if it were $200+

I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until somebody comes out with a slot machine game for these. There's no better way to sit in your office playing games all day AND sound productive! Although Nethack does a fairly decent job of that.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price

[zev1983]

I also was thinking about this, but only a few months ago. The thing is you'd have to have wires going up into every single key to have each one light up individually like that, which would seem like a pain in the ass to mass manufacture at an affordable price. Although there's probably a better method that uses some sort of connection that connects when you clip on th key, I don't really know much about this type of stuff. But if you were able to mass manufacture the keys with that printable OLED tech I've heard about it just might make it. It would be cool to see this in ergonimic designs like the ones from kinesis-ergo.com. I'd buy one of those with the picture keys and try out all the different ergomic keyboard layouts I keep hearing about on /.

You could have a bunch of other nifty, eye candy features in it, like being able to display pictures, or even motion over the whole keyboard if refresh was fast enough, though displaying a big picture would be the easiest. I would love to have an EQ going on my keyboard synced to music, that would really spruce up my desk!

Also as an added bonus you can finally have a Breasts Key!

Re:a couple of questions before buying

[gstoddart]

last, but for me most importantly, are the pretty pictures on the left-hand column of keys configurable? There's no way in Hell I'm ever buying a keyboard with a picture of the IE icon on one of its keys! For less expensive keyboards I satisfied and content with ripping out the Microsoft menu keys (though it's landed me in hot water at work a couple of times), but for something this (probably) expensive, those pictures had better be configurable!

I gte the distinct impression that since the keys are displayed graphically, you're seeing a sample they contrived.

For instance, I suspect most users wouldn't need a donkey icon on a daily basis, and it too would be a waste of space.

(And as to the Windows menu key, I find it easier to just disable it and leave it in -- a sa sloppy, non-home-row typist, it's far more nuisance than it ever will be help.)

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price

[Otter]

They do seem to make some real stuff [artlebedev.com], some of which is pretty sweet looking. (Although $125 for a whitebaord with a clock in the middle is a bit over my budget.)

At any rate, I'm pleased to see people catching on that the keyboard isn't real, especially after the 1000 post argument a few days ago over a joke about executing virus writers...

Re:Viruses will have a field day!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a nice time with yer spyware, and virii, and ddon;t forget to wash your hands, keyboard and mouse with Purell. Feel free to join the laughter anytime.

With Apple switching to less expensive CPU hardware supplied by Intel, you smug Apple loving assholes should expect to see a surge in users and thus virsues and trojans.

While I'm disappointed that in owning a Mac I'm lumped in the same degenerate group as you, I'm glad that I know that at least I'm not as big of a fucking toolbox as you obviously are.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price

[Leroy_Brown242]

Not only expenisive monitarily, but I bet that bad boy would be heavy too.

Not that people carry their keyboards around much.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price

[drgonzo59]

Yeah but still they can get the patent on it first then they can start thinking about production. That is why it is just a design studio not a hardware company. I am sure this would look interesting to people at Alienware or Belkin or even Microsoft. It is good for games, would be great for an IDE, or Photoshop and many other uses.

Actually I just thought of another idea, why not use the keyboard as a small console display as well. This could be used as a portable console in administering and fixing rack-mounted servers. The keyboard can have a small screen that will show about 10-20 lines of a terminal and also the keys would dynamically change to reflect various connection and management functions. For example after pressing "F1" the layout of the keyboard changes and now the keys to reflect a new submenu. If the key is not pressed but just slightly touched the console will display a short help message.

This would be one expensive keyboard but people who have the money to blow might be interested...

Re:a couple of questions before buying

[Adrilla]

These guys are obviously big mac fans. Itunes, quicktime, plus if you look at the mouse [artlebedev.com] that's designed for a mac. But I'd love this for photoshop and music programs. The big problems being having the program manufacturers map out programs for such a rare keyboard (assuming it ever made it to the public).

Re:a couple of questions before buying

[The_Wilschon]

Hey, those keys could be very nice for desktop switching. Some WM's and desktop pagers will put a miniature view of each desktop on the pager... now we can move that off the screen and onto keyboard, saving even more valuable screen space! I think it's a great idea.

Re:Applications beyond computing

[zerOnIne]

like this [yamaha.com]? it's been around for a few years. there's even a guitar version [optekmusic.com]. you don't really need the complexity of OLED displays for this purpose.

Re:Good Idea, Bad Price

[Talking Goat]

Seems like you'd be better off making a flat keyboard, a la ST:TNG. OLED is flexible, so you could actually produce a single sheet, with indentations behind it that give a "flex". So, you get around the 100+ tiny OLEDS problem by now using a single OLED, and you also get something out of your flat input device that no one has been able to accomplish: tactile feedback.

Plus, you can operate OLED in "lit" mode or plain LCD mode, giving you functionality in a wide range of ambient light situations.

Let's go into production, damn it!

Das Keyboard

[mattdm]

For the cheapskates there's always Das Keyboard!!

Well, it isn't exactly cheap, but it is actually really nice. My keyboard at work had one too many coffees spilled on it, so I asked for Das Keyboard for the replacement. I was anticipating a little adjustment period, but there really wasn't any. It takes zero extra effort to type -- my fingers apparently know where all the keys are -- and the weighting and feel of the keys is excellent. The only problem I have is when I'm working on something else and want to reach over to hit a control key combination or something -- then I have to think.

(PS: you can get it directly from its own web site: http://www.daskeyboard.com/ [daskeyboard.com] for four cents cheaper than Thinkgeek, and with free shipping to North America.)

Re:Won't someone please think of the children?

[VGR]

Sun keyboards do this, and I love it. (Though Sun keyboards have a number of other qualities which I don't love....)

If, like me, you're a keyboard power user, then having those left function keys, like Open, Front, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Props and so on is a godsend. And from a user interface standpoint, they're a lot smarter than expecting novice users to know Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-Z. (And it would be nice if novice users didn't keep trying to get those combinations to work in Unix shells.)

It may make the keyboard bigger, but I'm not aware of any key combos comprised of both a left function key and some other key.

Re:a couple of questions before buying

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some of the heavily used keys are so worn out that the plastic surface feels smooth and the etching has gone"

The BBC Micro [heydon.org] had injection moulded keys with the glyphs running right through the key. After ten years the keys were smooth but still as legible as the day it was bought. A lovely keyboard.

Re:Good idea, really?

[_damnit_]

When I saw this, the first thing I thought of was the Internet cafe I sat at near Place de Bastille in Paris. It took me a long time to write the simple email I needed to get off because I had no clue where the keys were on a French Keyboard. It occasionally did some strange stuff. Touch typing is out too! Something like this where a single button on the side could change the keyboard to several languages would be great even in the states where English really isn't the only language spoken (even though we tend to think so).
Hell, the computer labs in school could use this for French, Spanish and other language labs. You know how hard it is to write a French paper without easy access to a cedilla or other diacritic marks?

Re:Good idea, really?

[aneurysm36]

agreed, this could be VERY practical.

hold down the ctrl key and-
x changes to "cut"
c changes to "copy"
v changes to "paste"

hold down the windows key and-
e changes to an explorer icon
pause/break changes to system properties

alt-tab out of q3 and the keys change back to letters

alt-tab to photoshop and the keys change to shortcuts and macros

Compromise to passive-matrix LCD

[foldgate]

E-Ink may be the only way this concept could be realized at a generally marketable price point--but only when that tech has actually made it to market itself! If this product is actually brought to market within the next 12 months, it will most likely be constructed with a monochrome LCD for each key--not as sexy, but passive-matrix LCDs are almost cheap enough now for this to be feasible.

Re:Good idea, really?

[ShieldW0lf]

Narrow minded viewpoint.

Keyboards are powerful as hell if you know how to use them, but most people don't have the time to learn everything their applications can do. If something like this caught on and became prevelant enough for all applications to include a keyboard configuration, it could really make the full use of keyboard shortcuts available to more people and dramatically increase their productivity. People who would never dream of reading the documentation would notice what their keys turned into when they hit control buttons and use the functionality.

This should replace every keyboard in the world.