Show Us Your Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals!
Just as the Jedi youngling would have to build their light saber, so is it a rite of passage for a true geek to build their own computer interfaces. And nothing makes a personal computer more personal than a custom keyboard, a bespoke mouse, an omnipotent macropad, a snazzy jog wheel, or a fancy flight yoke.
In this contest, we encourage you to make your strangest, fanciest, flashiest, or most custom computer peripherals, and share that work with all the rest of us. Wired or wireless, weird or wonderful, we want to see it. And Digi-Key is sponsoring this contest to offer three winners an online shopping spree for $150 each at their warehouse! More parts, more projects.
Make It Yours
Anyone can just go out an buy a keyboard, but if you want a custom ergonomic keyboard that's exactly fit to your own two hands, you probably have to make one with your own two hands. And if you an engraved brass mouse, well, you've got some engraving to do -- Logitech ain't gonna make one for you. Maybe you only type in binary, or maybe you need a keyboard for some alien language that has 450 individual letters. Or maybe the tiniest keyboard ever? You've got this.
But why stop with "normal" peripherals? We've seen a number of devices lately that blur the lines between macro pads and multi-axis joysticks -- both in sensual organic shapes and in brutal no-nonsense rectangles. And [scottbez1]'s explorations with a haptic smart-knob with a screen are nothing short of inspirational. It doesn't have to be an existing device to be awesome.
And is this even a peripheral? It's a USB man-in-the-middle device that turns on or off sarcastic capitalization, for those of you who are just too sarcastic all the time, but simultaneously too lazy to type that way.
Special Categories
As always, we've got a handful of special categories to serve as jumping off points to enable your flights of fancy. Whether your project fits into one of these niches or not, you're eligible to win the prize money, but at the end we'll be featuring some of our favorite entries on Hackaday.
- Strange Topographies: Tired of the normal old keyboard? Is a split, layered, staggered-row, orthogonal layout more your style? Prefer to type on spheres or in bowls? We’d like to see your craziest keyboard topography.
- Building a Better Mouse(trap): The domestic computer rodent is a prime target for peripheral personalization. DIY mice, trackballs, touch pads, or anything else that can move a cursor around is fair game here.
- Press the Any Key: Sometimes you just need a few more buttons to press or a knob to turn. Maybe it’s special functions for your video conferencing rig, or just a friendly volume control. Here’s a category for these single-purpose helpers that make your desk truly yours.
- Cyborg: If you’ve got a wearable computer, you’ve certainly noticed the dearth of wearable input methods. What have you done about it? Voice control, gesture detection gloves, or one-handed chording keyboards are popular alternatives. Let’s see yours!
- Virtual Reality: Let’s be honest. The normal ways of interacting with VR or AR scenarios are a little bit lame, and playing a driving game on a keyboard just doesn’t cut the mustard. A full-on cockpit for your flight simulator or physical sword for your virtual swordfight makes all the difference. Show us the peripherals that make virtual or game worlds more immersive.
You've Got Six Weeks
Many of you have already got a head start on this; you just have to document it up on Hackaday.io and enter in the contest. The rest of you, hopefully this is the inspiration you need. Start small with a scroll wheel, or go all-in and invent your own category of device. Time to make your computer interaction yours.
Thanks again to Digi-Key for sponsoring the prizes.
#contests #hackadaycolumns #hackadaycontests #inputdevice
![Black & white photo of early aircraft rollerball input device from post war years. Museum piece.
Joysticks quickly moved out of airplanes and alongside radar and sonar displays during WWII. Immediately after the war, in 1946, the first display-specific input was invented. Ralph Benjamin, an engineer in the Royal Navy, conceived of the rollerball as an alternative to the existing joystick inputs: “The elegant ball-tracker stands by his aircraft direction display. He has one ball, which he holds in his hand, but his joystick has withered away.” [source] The indication seems to be that the rollerball could be held in the hand, rather than set on a desk. However, the reality of manufacturing in 1946 meant that the original roller was a full-sized bowling ball. Unsurprisingly, the unwieldy, ten-pound rollerball did not replace the joystick.
This leads us to the five rules of computer input popularity. In order to take off, inputs must be:
Cheap
Reliable
Comfortable
Have software that makes use of it, and
Have an acceptable user error rate.
The last can be amortized by good software design that allows for non-destructive actions, but beware: after a certain point, even benign errors can be annoying. Autocorrect on touchscreens is a great example of user error often overtaking software capabilities.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/074/407/887/680/095/original/26a08ea6c9ea10f8.png)
