Aimpad: Cherry MX + IR Distance Sensing

[REVENGE]

Kickstarter



Intriguing.

[Nuum]

Similar to this "DIY" version:

But with IR sensor instead of a Hall effect sensor.

Looks interesting!

[IvanIvanovich]

Sounds kind of interesting... but I would not want the pad as shown due to physical layout.

[Broadmonkey]

This was actually what I expected when I first tried a mechanical keyboard (and knew nothing about them) I could not fathom why It was not analog when it felt like it should. The day I can quite easily make my own full keyboard with MX like analog switches is a day to behold!

[guilleguillaume]

Sounds interesting. If the whole community(Deskthority, Geekhack, OTD...) was interested this Kickstarter could really go trough because otherwise I don't think it will really reach the funds necessaries.

[Muirium]

This was actually what I expected when I first tried a mechanical keyboard (and knew nothing about them) I could not fathom why It was not analog when it felt like it should. The day I can quite easily make my own full keyboard with MX like analog switches is a day to behold!

Funny you should say that. I thought something similar, being used to long throw "velocity" sensitive MIDI keys. And typewriters! Digital keys seemed a terrible idea for gaming, and yet there they were and here we still are, decades later.

The hardware isn't the only obstacle. Software is the big one. The USB HID would need rewritten and ultimately the way that operating systems interpret keyboards. Single purpose drivers for Windows games are a hacky way in for this stuff – masquerading as analogue joysticks – but for everyone else?

Admittedly, I'm not even sure what I'd want an analogue keyboard to do when typing. Surely not repeating characters on adamant hits! But I do know that if it exists, I want one…

[Findecanor]

The hardware isn't the only obstacle. Software is the big one. The USB HID would need rewritten and ultimately the way that operating systems interpret keyboards.

In that case you would also have to rewrite all the games to know about analogue keyboard keys...

It is not that difficult to make a keyboard a composite USB device - acting both as a keyboard and a gamepad. Then you would select in the game whether you want to use analogue "gamepad" controls or digital "keyboard" controls.
For difficult games, you could have special Fn-key combinations that would make a set of keys keyboard-only or gamepad-only.
You could also do like some Windows drivers for gaming keyboards already do and change the config automatically depending on which game you are running.

[Muirium]

True. I'm coming at it from the wrong direction: a keyboard loving non-gamer!

Perhaps the way I'd use this is to have variable actuation points across the board, editable individually and on the fly. That way it'd still be digital as far as the host is concerned, but still with a world of analogue tomfoolery for the user.

[JBert]

This was actually what I expected when I first tried a mechanical keyboard (and knew nothing about them) I could not fathom why It was not analog when it felt like it should. The day I can quite easily make my own full keyboard with MX like analog switches is a day to behold!

The hardware isn't the only obstacle. Software is the big one. The USB HID would need rewritten and ultimately the way that operating systems interpret keyboards. Single purpose drivers for Windows games are a hacky way in for this stuff – masquerading as analogue joysticks – but for everyone else?

It would have to be rewritten if you want to keep using the plain old keyboard class in USB HID, but has anyone looked in detail at the "game controller" part of the HID standard?

And what's wrong with it acting like a joystick when both are made for games and games accept them fine?

[Findecanor]

It would have to be rewritten if you want to keep using the plain old keyboard class in USB HID, but has anyone looked in detail at the "game controller" part of the HID standard?

I came across this USB HID tutorial which talks about the protocol for a game pad and then they continue by defining a composite device that is both a gamepad as well as a keyboard and a mouse. I have not read through all of it or compared it to other sources. At least the author claims to have used his gamepad to play Battlefield and there is a screenshot from Windows that shows that it acknowledges the composite device.

[Grond]

If this works, does it mean you could theroetically build a "switch" based on IR led and sensor? I mean, you could set the activation point to a certain amount of light reflected.

[jacobolus]

If this works, does it mean you could theroetically build a "switch" based on IR led and sensor? I mean, you could set the activation point to a certain amount of light reflected.

Sure. This is basically what several types of keyswitches do already, such as capacitive and hall effect switches: they just have some threshold of capacitance / magnetic field / whatever beyond which their controllers consider the switch actuated.

There are also some existing opto-electric switches which just use the slider to break the line-of-sight between light source and detector. I think there might be some old patents describing switches with a mechanism similar to the idea under current discussion, though I’m not sure if any of them turn the result into an analog signal.

Here are a couple patents from the 1990s which looks somewhat similar to the Aimpad idea, but for sensing velocity of piano-keyboard keys:
https://www.google.com/patents/US5567902
https://www.google.com/patents/US5841050

[Findecanor]

You could also make an analogue opto-electric switch with a triangle-shaped groove that slides across a rectangular window (or the opposite), with a LED and a photodiode.