SenseL Morph + Some DIY—A $300 LightSpeed Alternative?

[atkuilas]

Just came across the SenseL Morph—basically a $299 force-sensitive touch pad
with 20,000 touch sensors. [1] To put it in context, Stenovations' LightSpeed Zenith
is equipped with 121 sensors under the keys and cracks.

It can register 16+ touches simultaneously, from 5g up to 5kg, with 32,000 levels
per touch. With the level of precision, I can imagine who program it as a DIY steno
keyboard can adjusts the activation force such that he can rest his fingers on the keys
without activating them.

Unlike a capacity touch screen, the device do work with gloved fingers, overlay
can also be put on top to provide haptic feedback. Its website even sells a QWERTY
overlay! [2] I can imagine myself cutting silicon pieces to experiment with ergonomic
steno layouts and hopefully it will ended up with a touch akin to Stenovations'
LightSpeed :-)

[1] https://sensel.com/pages/morph
[2] https://sensel.com/collections/overlays/products/qwerty-keyboard-overlay

P.S.> Sorry for my poor English and I hope this post is relevant to this group. If it sounds
like an advertisement, most likely my poor English language skill is to be blamed :-)

[Ted Morin]

It looks good as a concept, I guess someone would have to get one and do the development work to try it out and see if it's actually sensitive enough. I wonder if they'd be kind enough to send a dev kit over… 😁

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[Ted Morin]

I contacted the company and asked if they have dev kits available / if they are interested in me working on making their hardware work as a steno machine.

[atkuilas]

> I contacted the company and asked if they have dev kits available / if
> they are interested in me working on making their hardware work as a
> steno machine.

So excited to hear that!!! $300++ (due to the shipping) is in fact slightly
over my budget. Should I wait for the new SOFT/HRUF for its split layout,
or bite the bullet and went the SenseL route for its low force touch? Now
there's one more thing for me to agonize over!! 😩

About the sensitivity, here's a video of an artist paintbrushing on the device:
https://youtu.be/GqEagkS9Dsk

[Ted Morin]

The best steno machine you can buy for cheap, in my opinion, is the Stenomod: https://stenomod.blogspot.com/

Charley is shipping them all the time, whereas the SOFT/HRUF is a preorder (which I have already placed as well 😁).

I see the Morph has lots of marketing videos, but I'm just inherently skeptical about any piece of hardware until I try it. I also think that their configuration software wouldn't quite cut it for simulating the steno machine out of the box, we'd need to have some custom code. I'm hoping they reply with a path for me to take.

[atkuilas]

> The best steno machine you can buy for cheap, in my opinion, is the
Stenomod: https://stenomod.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the advice! I've looked into Stenomod too. But in the end, I've
chosen the split SOFT/HRUF since it can double as a split/lower-force
QWERTY keyboard—just in case I failed to learn steno, for the best bang
for the buck 😁

[Robert Fontaine]

I'm not sure that the feel would be desirable (no feedback) but some folk might like typing on a flat hard non-responsive surface.

Hard to know till you try it.

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Thank you,

Robert Fontaine
204 293 6253

[Ted Morin]

I could see flat typing working, but I found the LightSpeed to be too unsensitive, if anything.

[atkuilas]

> I'm not sure that the feel would be desirable (no feedback) but some folk might like typing on a flat hard non-responsive surface.

For DIY overlay, in their FAQ they recommend using flexible materials up to 4 mm (!!!) thick depending on the stiffness of the material. And according to The Verge's review, their keyboard overlay is "surprisingly easy to use":
https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/25/9201149/sensel-morph-pressure-sensitive-trackpad-kickstarter

So, presumably it won't be another iStenoPad 😁

> I could see flat typing working, but I found the LightSpeed to be too unsensitive, if anything.

Surprised that it is unsensitive😯, since the LightSpeed is marketed as having "feather-light touch". Do the keys provide haptic feedback—like whether a key is down, or do they only serve as a texture guidance of key position? I suppose the latter is easier to simulate with an overlay over a.. err.. trackpad.

[Jason Woofenden]

Looks like the Sensel Morph is proprietary. They have an API you
can play with, but I don't see source code for the firmware or the
flasher software.

They have a github account... but it contains neither of firmware
nor flasher.

I want to like this thing, but they seem to be a little full of
crap. They say they want people to experiment and innovate with it,
but they don't give the source code, or even make the GUI/flasher
available for Linux. The "Tech Specs" tab on their store page says
that it's accuracy is "6,502 DPI"... WHAT? For that to be true
they'd need over 2.5 _billion_ sensors, but they have less than 20
thousand.

And I had my usual gripe about tech stuff where it's hard to find
out what they actual hardware can do. They have some info, but it's
scattered. I only found out how many sensors the thing has in an
inner documentation page about their API (the actual device is
almost 3% shy of the "20,000" sensors they say it has.)

Also it's hard for me to imagine that anybody is going to make
overlays. Do people have access to a 3D printer that can print
something that feels good, is flexible and durable and nine inches
wide?

Maybe you can hand-cut thin sheets of silicone and glue them
together?

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Jason

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[Ted Morin]

I think the skepticism is wise. I am not holding my breath, but hopefully the company gets back to me and we can collaborate on seeing if the hardware is capable. It is very possible that it is not.

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[atkuilas]

@Jason Woofenden Thank you for the detailed info! My intuition was that if it works as a decent drawing tablet as they advertised, its precision is probably already an overkill for steno. An overlay, however, will likely decrease its precision to a degree—the wide gaps between the keys on their QWERTY Overlay might be an indicator.☹️ I think a simple litmus test is to steno with the QWERTY Overlay in NKRO mode to see if it works, provided that the "cracks" aren't too wide for steno-ing of course.

For the overlay my (very naive) idea is to just stick some silicon keys on the Innovator's Overlay LOL

[Ted Morin]

This is a little out there, but I think the overlay is probably a little overrated. If I were to make my own design, I would probably just use raised lines.

The only raised portion of the board would be the cracks between STPH and SKWR, between A and O, between E and U, between FPLTD and RBGSZ. Then, I would probably add a vertical line to divide the asterisks and one to divide TS from DZ. After that, that's your home row, and everything else is done without any keys as your hands don't really move laterally or anything. If you press on the line, it's both keys, if you press off to either side, it's just one key on each side.

Something like this, but without the lettering:

Not sure how good it would feel but I've wanted to try something like it for a while!

[atkuilas]

Raised lines is an elegant design and can easily works on most capacitive touch screen! Not so sure about the key feel though if the overlay is thin...

I'll suggest making the layout V-shaped to decrease wrists deviation. Plus LightSpeed Zenith has some (radical?) layout ideas:
https://www.stenovations.com/lightspeed/information/

[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

You have the same idea that I had. Actually I already have a Sensel Morph and I have been trying to develop a steno machine on that for a little while. Unfortunately, I do not have too much time to work on this now but I'll share what I have done for now.

The best thing that I could come up was to actually buy a set of those foam rubber keytop covers for a steno machine and then put those on the developers Sensel overlay. I had to just make sure that I had thin ones and so that the adhesive is the kind that will not permanently glue the keys on. Once I got those from StenoWorks I just positioned them on the overlay and tested the sensitivity. The keys are quite easy to move around even if you have mispositioned them but also the keys once put on place do not move around easily at all. The final thing looks surprisingly stylish.

I first tried tilt the steno keys, but they did not fit completed on the overlay especially because I wanted to have the extra keys in the middle and for the left hand. But if the extra keys are not there, then the keys can be laid to a small angle for more ergonomic feel. But honestly it did not feel that more ergonomic when I tried it.

I also tested the sensitivity of the keys and according to the first test I would say that there is enough sensitivity in order to be able to separate not only the individual keys but also when the gaps between the keys are pressed. I included one of the test key press figures as an attachment in which I have tested the left hand side consonants up to P and W including the number bar and the extra keys. There is little bit ghosting of the keys at the very top and the number bar is not quite separated from the #P stroke but by moving everything bit down, there should be then more than enough room to give more sensitivity to the number bar. Next my plan is to map all the keys and perhaps develop a small Python script to give the stroke out of the key presses. Then it should not be too difficult to integrate this with the Plover itself.

If you any suggestions how to go forward, please let me know.

[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

Here is is the sensitivity map.

[Ted Morin]

If you place coins on a key, how many of what currency does it take to be sensed by the device?

On Nov 14, 2017 8:18 AM, "Ilkka Pohjalainen" <ilkka.t.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here is is the sensitivity map.

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[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 3:19:52 PM UTC+2, Ted Morin wrote:

If you place coins on a key, how many of what currency does it take to be sensed by the device?

Just tested the Sensel steno overlay keys and I would say that 2 one euro coins are enough to get a consistent signal. With 3 I get definitely a signal.

I have to say that the Sensel is really sensitive. I barely need to press the keys on the overlay and it registers. The Sensel also outputs directly the pressed keys as separate presses which makes the parsing of the input data whole lot easier. If I press STKPWHRAOEUFRPBLGTS I get about 10-14 different position being pressed with force information simultaneously with very good time resolution. The reason why there sometimes is more than 10 position when only 10 fingers are used is that some cracks when pressed are registered two keys.

See the raw data as attachment. I did put the STKPWHRAOEUFRPBLGTS in the beginning then wrote little bit.

Ilkka

[Ted Morin]

That implies about 15-20 grams for actuation, which is similar to a LightSpeed. Not quite the <5 I was hoping for.

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[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 4:14:12 PM UTC+2, Ted Morin wrote:

That implies about 15-20 grams for actuation, which is similar to a LightSpeed. Not quite the <5 I was hoping for.

If you want sensitivity,  you can always remove the overlay and put the keys directly on the Sensel.

I just did this and I literally could not even touch the key without it registering it. no matter how lightly I tried to tap it.

[Ted Morin]

Is that so? Then I might consider buying one and developing. How does the overlay work / why?

[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 4:39:05 PM UTC+2, Ted Morin wrote:

Is that so? Then I might consider buying one and developing. How does the overlay work / why?

 

Pretty much. I tried to put the coins on top the key just to give you estimate of the force without the overlay, but the problem was that I could not lay them careful enough on the key. Just letting them sit on key with very lit weight only will register only a brief moment until the Sensel think that there is nothing pressing it. I think with very low forces Sensel will give an output only if force is slightly changing over time. You can just blow on the Sensel without the overlay and it will register. It is that sensitive.

The overlays are just different rubber pad or sheets with different key designs and layouts. The whole point with Sensel Morph is that you can put different overlays on top of it and then Sensel will "morph" to the specific purpose of the overlay. I just have the developer's overlay and a qwerty overlay but there is whole lot of more like art overlay, drum overlay, media editor overlay, et cetera.

Ilkka

[Ted Morin]

Very cool. For next steps, I'd be curious to see if we can get the machine interfacing with Plover with a serial protocol. What sort of options do you get for development beyond just their configuration GUI program?

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[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 5:18:49 PM UTC+2, Ted Morin wrote:

Very cool. For next steps, I'd be curious to see if we can get the machine interfacing with Plover with a serial protocol. What sort of options do you get for development beyond just their configuration GUI program?

This was quite useful: https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api-python 

[Ted Morin]

I was just looking at their API.

I guess it would be a Plover machine plugin, and you'd have to get the user to install the sensel-lib in order to use it. Okay, maybe it would be worth purchasing one to try and adapt it to steno.

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[Ted Morin]

One thing that just occurred to me (that quite excites me) is that it would be very easy to have a mode where the machine stops acting like a steno machine and starts acting like a trackpad, letting you seamlessly move between steno and mousing, a problem I've had for far too long.

[Ilkka Pohjalainen]

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 9:07:12 PM UTC+2, Ted Morin wrote:

One thing that just occurred to me (that quite excites me) is that it would be very easy to have a mode where the machine stops acting like a steno machine and starts acting like a trackpad, letting you seamlessly move between steno and mousing, a problem I've had for far too long.

Could not agree more. This was one of the things that really has really made this approach attractive to me. My initial plan has been to leave space on the left and right sides empty if an touch pad for mouse control was possible to implement there.

Though, I have to say that I do not expect track pad usability through a overlay to be that great. So either the steno keys would need to be attached directly on top of the Sensel surface or then a steno overlay should be cut so that the black Sensel surface would be visible.

The great thing, however, is that one could go back and forth between the steno keys and the touch pad areas seamlessly without any need to switch to mouse and steno "modes".

Ilkka

[Ted Morin]

I've ordered a Morph and will try and develop a Plover plugin to work with it. I have some ideas, but I don't think I'll be using an overlay at all as sensitivity, on a machine without physical feedback, is in my mind super important. I'll try and get something working and I'm going to brainstorm on mouse usage.

Some issues with the LightSpeed that I had included canceling strokes. If you accidentally hit the board, which often happens, you had to wait a few seconds before releasing if you didn't want to send a chord. With the Sensel, you could program it such that if you just apply a lot of pressure, like 100g, it cancels the stroke. You could use this when, for example, finding the home row after not writing for a while. You can use gestures or pressure levels to toggle in and out of mouse mode. Lots of ideas! I guess the first thing will be validating the first use case of interfacing it with Plover, and seeing if it performs while writing at 200WPM.

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[jessica caudron]

just lurking and watching this thread but this is very interesting. This reminds me of the digiTouch writer by digitcalCAT that was made by Fingerworks, before Fingerworks was then acquired by Apple.

I like the idea of the Lightspeed but have never tried one, and $300 for this seems like a reasonable gamble.

What I would like is this to work as a keyboard and mouse for gaming, qwerty typing, and steno, at will, on the fly. I haven't played for a couple years because offspring, but I miss it a lot. 

that's it, lurking again.

[Ty Griffin]

 I like the slanted vowel keys. They make it more comfortable.

[Tom Fetherston]

Interesting Jessica, I been following this long enough to be familiar with the story of digiTouch.

I been waiting for something other than Force Sensing Resistors as in the Lightspeed(s-?).

Here is an idea for a different sort of overlay, Hit a makerspace, library, or university with a laser cutter and make a blank with all the keys cut out, (probably with all/most the key "holes" connected), then cover it all with some slightly stretchy fabric.  That way you can rest on the fabric without making contact.  To give the "key" locations more definition you could experiment with forming the separations something like fishing line.

When in college for Computer Science, I wrote a paper for my AI class on using the data that something like this could yield to add some true AI to translating strokes into text.

Tom

[Tom Fetherston]

Sorry about the grammar, a lot of those I's should have been I'ves -- 

[Ted Morin]

We purchased a Sensel Morph, I think it's a little more sensitive than the LightSpeed. I'm experimenting with adapting it to steno. Some notes:

- I'm using it without an overlay

- The API is pretty simple, but overall their API wrappers don't seem fully up to date with the core, which is annoying

- If we develop something custom using the API, I think it will work cross-platform, but only wired. Doesn't seem like Bluetooth lets you connect to the machine with their library

[Jack Armitage]

Hi Ted,

Just wondering if you had any more updates about your exploration of the Sensel? Or anyone else in the thread?

Seems like a promising direction!

[Ted Morin]

I had some success playing with the API, I just got halted with a lot of my open source time lately between work and trying to stay active. I'd like to get back into it but it falls a little bit behind on my priority list, behind the Stenograph USB plugin, my theory book, closing up some PRs on Plover, and dictionary builder enhancements.

If you play with it, definitely keep me updated! Always love to fork someone else's work 😁

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[Jack Armitage]

Ok that's a fairly decent amount of things you've got going on there! Will post back here if I get going with it!

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