Week Two

The project proposal has been through two rigorous sets of edits culminating in the following changes and specifics. Our goal has been narrowed to building a keyboard that enforces good typing habits in young children that have all ten fingers. (That last piece was made necessary by a question from our adviser about how children with missing fingers type. We would like to point out that the requirement of all ten fingers is NOT discriminatory as we did not invent touch typing, but are merely enforcing its rules.) The habits in our goal statement have been defined as keeping fingers on the home row and and using the correct finger to strike a key. Home row is defined as asdfjkl; and both shift keys.

Technical aspects of the project have been altered to reflect the change in the goal. In lieu of variable light intensity, the home row keys will be fitted with capacitor sensors to provide feedback on the presence of fingers on the home row keys. If fewer than seven of the ten home row capacitors are active, the appropriate key will flash to remind the user to keep their fingers on the home row. While individual keys will still light up when pressed, the keys themselves will be painted with appropriate colors corresponding to the finger that should strike them. Therefore, all LEDs will be white since the color is determines by the paint. Obviously, research on how to construct and implement these items is underway and many blogs have been read. It has been learned that keyboard enthusiasts do not document their work well, however arcade builders (who design similar projects) are very good at detailed instructions.

The research includes how to build a keyboard matrix, what types of keyswitches are best for what uses, how to add LEDs to a keyswitch, and how to make a capacitive sensor circuit. Furthermore, research on Arduino and Spark Core microcontrollers is being done.