One Handed Keyboard
These guys are quite well-known in China and have recently started uploading tto Youtube as well. Their videos are quite entertaining and have extremely high production value compared to many other creators.
https://www.youtube.com/@HTXStudio/videos
I love the one about the automated trash cans.
If anyone's interested in something way faster that still lets you go one handed. Take a look at the charachorder. You can type one handed, or easily rip 200wpm with 2 hands. But it does take like a year to get fast. I was coming from a moonlander tho so I was ready
Just leaving some links here because I had been researching this intensively before a planned shoulder surgery:
(Definitely adding this to my list)
Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/
Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
I saw the keyboard to be operated by the left hand only and here is my (totally personal and somewhoat adjacent) problem with it.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
Like people trying to find new interfaces for music making [thank god touchscreens!], there are people trying to figure out new hardware for interacting with computers. Thank you dudes!
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
i believe that a crucial feature of good keyboards is that your wrist is stationary. this enables a better form of "muscle memory".
i've been using such a keyboard for two decades.
I thought this was a meme for cultured games.
This looks like all you can eat of the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
The right hand keyboard could finally make me look like Boris from Golden Eye typing away while holding a pen in the left hand
Matias has a neat one-handed keyboard. It's quite expensive for what it is, especially considering these days where it's so easy to get a keyboard with remappable keys. There's a simulator on the sidebar at the link, and IMO it's quite intuitive.
I'm trying to understand why this isn't a thing already. It seems there would be a market for it; when you consider all the different keyboards shapes and sizes...
Interesting. I worry about its ergonomics though as RSI might develops over time after long term usage of that design.
I've been designing my own one-handed keyboard for 3 years. My main problem is that both of my wrist suffers from RSI and either wrist can ocassionally acts up with different levels of pain. (I also have shoulder problem.) They can become practically disabled temporarily for a few weeks, or just quite painful for me to avoid using it. So my desiderata are a bit different from permanently one-handed people.
Interestingly my right wrist is acting up in the last couple weeks so I've been going through a iterative redesign phase recently. I probably will write up a blog post in the future when I have the final design, I'm going through it briefly below:
Desiderata: (first three are directly from the temporarily and random disabled hand criteria)
- primary used for two hands - each hand should be able to single-handedly control the computer - skill transfer from two hand to one hand: since one hand use is oacassional, retraining time should be minimal - based on the research in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327051hci1101_... which eventually becomes a producten https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/ , the concept of a mirror key becomes a requirement: with the hold of a mirror key, the key at the mirror image position is active. An implementation detail is that the mirror key is a dual function key: on tap it is space, on hold it is mirror. I've implemented other possibility but find that the design in this research is better than others I come up with. - symmetric keyboard would facilitate this, where many split keyboards already is. - I must be able to buy them off the shelf. I do not have the skills to design it from scratch, nor do I afford to put more strain to my hand to assemble it from parts. - ergonomic must be one the of the primary goal of the keyboard, to minimize RSI. Speed is not important at all for example. - from my empircal experience, split keyboard, espeicially true split keyboard would encourage a better wrist and shoulder ergonomics. Hence I require split keyboards.
Based on these criteria, I bought ZSA Moonlander (QMK based) personally and Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro (ZMK based) for work.
The mirror key based design is currently at
- Moonlander https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/QwA3z/latest/0
- Adv360 Pro: https://github.com/ickc/Adv360-Pro-ZMK/tree/dev
The ZSA training site is useful to iterate this design process: after each iteration I'd train per single hand and see if it works. For example in my earlier design I mainly focused on testing single left hand use and later found it doesn't quite work for single right hand.
Finally, macOS sticky modifier is used to hold modifier with a single hand. I.e. Ctrl+Opt+A becomes Ctrl+Opt, release, A. This is because OSM in QMK cannot handles one-shot of multiple modifiers well. Without doing fancy thing, you need to do Ctrl, release, Opt, release, A.
Same design working across Moonlander and Adv360 is important. Layout differences is not that much thankfully, but firmware difference can be a pain.
Lastly, I recently bought a Silakka54 for the ocassions where the setup hassle of either is too high. Basically either lap use or going to a meeting. I think my current layout design is adaptable to it but I'll see.
From the submission title I expected some kind of chorded keyboard. This is just a tiny regular keyboard. What a bummer.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
..we found an off the shelf keyboard that could work, but we couldn't get it because it was 999 euros. So let's make 7 iterations of our own keyboard with our Formlabs 3d printer, create silicom molds for each key, print legends with our uv printer and we're done. Glad he did though, looks awesome!
About 20 years ago I wrote a little program to turn my own standard keyboard into something I could type on one hand with. It's basically just T9, with every basic letter key bound to two letters instead of one. (The mirror counterpart from the other side of the keyboard.)
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
is it only left-handed?
I am kind of fascinated that some people move the world forward finding a solution even for supposedly dare conditions, while others kill innocent with bombs. This is what I've felt after watching the video.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
Super cool!
holy crap I want one of these, I spend a ton of time with one hand on my drawing stylus and the other on my keyboard and not having to go as far for right-side shortcuts would be great.
Add eye tracking to replace the track ball please. :-)
It's in Mandarin
"Hi, would you like some RSI?"
"Yes, just the one thank you."
Their video on YouTube, in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vW12gQ4Klc