Do you love typing on your iPad, the feel of your digits drumming atop virtualized letters glowing out of slippery glass? No, we thought not: for serious typing, few do, which is why the iPad keyboard case market is doing so well. So I have some haptic problems with this Kickstarter project to bring a wireless multi-touch glass keyboard and mouse to market. Aesthetically, though? Gorgeous.
The keyboard and mouse combo uses infrared LEDs mounted along the edge of the glass, causing light to bounce around inside the glass. When a finger taps down on a key or button, it distorts the light; that distortion is then captured by a miniature camera, which runs the math and calculates which key was being hit.
It’s a very nifty trick, and there’s no doubt that this keyboard and mouse would look wonderful sitting in front of an iMac. Even better? The software is open source, allowing other developers to come up with their own drivers for the peripherals:
Imagine a mouse that can select objects and zoom like an iPad or rotate puzzle parts while moving them to position, or a keyboard that can toggle from a standard keyboard to a tool to smear separate areas of color for each finger on an image. You might want to toggle your number pad off and dedicate that space to video-editing CAD design or music mixing. The functions of these spaces are limited only by our imagination!
A $150 Kickstarter pledge will guarantee you the mouse, while $250 or more will guarantee you the keyboard. There’s still 32 days to go, and the project has already made half the $50,000 backing it needs to get off the ground, so it seems like a lock this will enter production.
