element14 presents
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2020–2026
13:30 · 201K views · Nov 26, 2012
Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.
Cited as 2012 prior art for analog keyboards when newer analog-key products and patents come up.
3 comments from Hacker News
I wouldn’t worry about those ones at least. I read through the claims of the US patents, and they’re essentially describing “turn the arrow keys into a joystick”. US8717202B1 explicitly limits the mechanism to a light-and-mirror sort of arrangement (thus, optical switches). US8922399B2 is a broadening of the former patent, removing that limitation (which weakens it a lot because it’s not describing a concrete implementation but an abstract idea), and thus I think it would be claiming other forms of analogue switches (e.g. magnetic) too. Either way, there are a number of products on the market that, if would be infringing these patents (unless their manufacturers licensed the patents). Besides all this, I don’t believe individuals need to worry about patents if they’re doing things for themselves only. But beyond that, I would be quite happy to ignore the Aimpad patents because the concept was not novel, and prior art exists. this video was in 2012 and I haven’t gone searching any further. Taking the broader ’399: the project in that video is, I believe (I haven’t watched much of it, more just read a few comments about it and skimmed it), prior art for claims 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, and maybe others. For the rest, claim 2 is a supremely obvious extension of claim 1. Claim 4 is obvious and shouldn’t be patentable anyway. Claim 7 is… “what? how else could you possibly do it?”, viz. obvious. Claim 8 is obvious (as in, if such noise is a problem, of course you’re going to do this, it
There are diodeless (no matrix) split keyboards ( [LINK] ) like Cantor: [LINK] . They use chips similar to that one: XIAO ESP32S3 nRF52840 Sense Plus - wireless, energy efficient, with 20 pins GPIO or more - one pin for one key - [LINK] (there was an option of 16 pins extra using expander [LINK] - which is not made anymore, but you can use same chip MCP23017 to get that effect [LINK] [LINK] , up to 128 I/O pins : [LINK] - in that case - 36 simultaneous inputs by hand) - and with Hall sensor keys or similar we are soon talking about _easy_ having ~40+ .. simultaneus muiltiple ANALOG inputs in "keyboards" - like in Mitt [LINK] - or XBOX Controller Mods: Analog WASD Gaming Keyboard this video .
That's mostly copycats of Ben Heck approach from 2012 - some technical improvements, but like without understanding, further thinking about function - or imagination why someone needed it first, then what would be next. So all seems stuck for me, and not much than a bit a closer since then to what (and in which way) I want, starting from smoothly increasing the repeat rate with pressure for cursor keys or scrolling - not having to macro simulate it with few levels only. ( XBOX Controller Mods: Analog WASD Gaming Keyboard this video 2012)