#15

I used to own an AlphaSmart. I think it was the Dana model, which ran palm pilot apps I didn’t care about, but had higher resolution / fit more lines of text on the screen. It’s probably in storage – it wasn’t a high priority to keep track of that when I consolidated my belongings. But I never considered that it might have artistic uses (outside of undistracted writing, which was largely the point).

I doubt there are any palm pilot apps that integrate with Dana’s “keyboard out” functionality, but if you can dig up an SDK, there might be some additional potential there.

It’s an interesting thought, to be sure…

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#16

a quick search also turned up this: https://store.genovation.com/index.php/programmables.html

you can program your own macros and it has onboard flash memory. not guaranteed if it would work with teletype but assuming it acts as a generic keyboard and doesn’t have a usb hub inside it could be fine.

as for going with a separate microprocessor, ansible/trilogy modules would be probably the shortest route. a usb port already included, adding keyboard support would be trivial, could communicate with teletype via i2c. the problem is the difficulty of implementing a 2 way i2c protocol.

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#17

I have a Vortex Core mechanical keyboard that stores all of its firmware and key bindings internally. It has the ability to program macros. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I bought that keyboard with that in the back of my mind. Switching into a custom layer for live mode with a few macros setup seems fairly simple and doesn’t require any external hardware/software.

2 Likes
#18

tenor

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#19

That vertex core keyboard looks pretty on point! I may have to get that one and check it out for myself. If you decide to test it out I would love to hear about your results.

#20

FYI, several people reported issues when using vortex keyboards: Mechanical keyboard for teletype?

1 Like
#21

Thank you for the link! Looks like most people are having dropped key issues which would be super annoying. But I do also wonder how reliably the programmed commands are sent. I might bite the bullet and still pick one up. Its a bit of an investment but I also like the look a lot. Which, sad to say, goes a long way too. Ha!

EDIT: But you know those Genovation Control pads don’t look so bad either.

#22

I can give programmed keys a go. But yeah, typing with a vortex keyboard on Teletype currently requires some amount of deliberateness in your typing.

1 Like
#23

did you have a chance to try the latest test version?

#24

I have not yet, I’m sorry! My modular time has been a little engrossed with my little side project of making & selling Teletype boards, Slashes, and Offworlds for the community :slight_smile: When testing Teletype right now I’ve been using my 3.0-rc5 w/ 15 ms polling custom build, which semi-works but I will give the test build a shot. Sorry for neglecting that.

I have a class tonight after work but could give a shot after that possibly, and definitely Thursday night. Will report back, sorry for the delay.

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#25

no problem! tbh not sure it will even work but would be good to find a fix.

#26

I think this could just be part of the Teletype firmware?

where in LIVE mode a specific key combinations would automatically paste and execute lines of pre-written code…

There would be a need for “editing” screen, where users can write the specific lines of code to be associated with a particular key combinations. (kind of like executing the scripts from the numeric keypad)

1 Like
#27

A way to treat the keyboard like the grid might make sense? So listening for keycodes or keycode combos in live mode.

Maybe using caps lock as a “macros active/inactive” toggle so you know when you can type freely or not?

To me this brings up the timeline/shadow scripts discussion. More space to define macros in script is also relevant.

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#28

@scanner_darkly @xenus_dad I updated to the version linked to and wasn’t able to reproduce any sort of lost keystroke with my vortex core!

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#29

Yes, I was thinking about the same thing!
I imagine writing these script lines would end up a bit like a “timeline”, but one that could be accessed one line at a time, nonlinearly by the various keybaoard key combinations.

OR
now that you mentioned it: the grid… so like a list of 128 lines of code where each can be played by grid pads…

Can you imagine playing earthsea, except instead of the note values you could sequence the lines of code?

:eyes::thinking:

4 Likes
#30

I’ll give a shot tonight. I type fast :slight_smile:

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#31

@scanner_darkly, this is also perfect, for me. It’s like having a whole new module! Or a working keyboard :slight_smile:

Does this come with potential performance side effects?

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#32

awesome, thanks for testing @jlmitch5 and @xenus_dad!

this version doesn’t have any changes in how often keyboard is polled, so no effect on performance. the fix is described here.

i’m pretty sure the version i posted should have everything from 3.0 but i’ll make another build tonight using the official 3.0 just in case and post it in the other thread.

#33

re: assigning arbitrary commands to shortcuts - this is basically scripts, with the ability to assign shortcuts to them, which necessitates having more scripts or the timeline feature (as scripts 1-8 already have shortcuts assigned to them).

1 Like
#34

That is exactly the case.