The biohack.me forums were originally run on Vanilla and ran from January 2011 to July 2024. They are preserved here as a read-only archive. If you had an account on the forums and are in the archive and wish to have either your posts anonymized or removed entirely, email us and let us know.
While we are no longer running Vanilla, Patreon badges are still being awarded, and shoutout forum posts are being created, because this is done directly in the database via an automated task.
ASETNIOP chorded keyboard
Greetings!
I'm Zack Dennis, the designer of the ASETNIOP keyboard. It's a keyboard replacement system that uses only ten input points, instead of the 50+ of a traditional keyboard. I have a vision that someday we'll be able to have implantable buttons/sensors in our fingertips, and my system will be the foundation of how people will uses their only fingers to type, without the need for any external device (keyboards, touchscreens, etc.) at all. As such, I wanted to reach out to the biohacking community and meet some of the pioneers behind these kinds of advances.
While my system is ideally designed for the next generation of input device, it's also intended for use with touchscreens. I'm putting the finishing touches on an Android version for tablets, and I wanted to invite folks here to sign up to play around with the beta version. I'm hoping to have something available within the next couple of weeks. If interested, please sign up!
A bit more about the system - the concept is that of a chorded keyboard, which has been around for a long time. What sets ASETNIOP apart from earlier attempts is that it is based off the familiar QWERTY design. The eight base letters (ASETNIOP) each correspond to the most commonly used letters that are associated with each finger. These eight letters, along with the space "bar" which is actuated with the right thumb, already account for 65% of keystrokes. The remaining letters of the alphabet, plus punctuation, are available as chords (two buttons keys pressed at the same time). Easy chords, like index-middle, are used for common letters like R and H. Difficult/awkward chords are used for the least common letters and symbols. The following diagram shows the base layout.
![](http://asetniop.com/images/layout.png)
All of the base chords use just two fingers, which is pretty straightforward. Where it gets more interesting is when you start combining three or more keys at the same time. This produces output that is made out of the potential letters that are going in - for example, if you press S along with the chord for H, you'll get "SH" out. If you press T, H, and E at the same time, you'll get "THE". Some full words, such as "ABOUT", can be built using fewer keys (4) than there are letters in the word! The system makes pretty good judgments about what you're trying to do; based on context it can tell whether you meant the combination for "TION" (if the preceding letters were, for example, "IMAGINA") or "ING" (if you started with "IMAGIN"). What's nice is that you don't have to learn these larger combinations deliberately; it happens organically once you've mastered the base layout.
I'm very eager to chat with folks who can see the potential value of this for biohacking purposes. I'd be very happy to answer any questions you've got, either here or privately (@asetniop.com">zack@asetniop.com). Any questions?
Comments
Displaying all 3 comments
-
why do astniop when you could have the mains be acegikoqs making it so that when you press a and c you get b making it simpler and easier to understand then just rework the chording like that
-
It has to do with practicality - you'd be wasting a single-finger press on Q, which is only used in 0.10% of keystrokes, and relegating T, the second-most common letter of all to a chord. There's a system called In10did that uses a logical progression of that nature (http://in10did.com/how-it-works.html) - ASETNIOP is much faster because the majority of keypresses are of a single button.
-
Interesting idea! I kind of want to try it out but I don't have any desire to pick up an Android tablet just for this use. I will keep an eye on your progress but of course I'll let you know if I do end up getting a tablet. Cheers.
Displaying all 3 comments