What do you think he's using to register the keypresses?
Good question. If only he would've expounded on the mechanics.
Did he? I have all sounds disabled on my computer, so I have no idea if he said anything about it. I checked the URL he had at the end, but couldn't find anything (and it's in, like, Japanese or something) about it, there.
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Looking at the "USBTYPEWRITER" thing, I think i a similar tech would work with a selectric. There's a little room under the linkages.
Let me open it up again and see.
(See if you ground the chassis, and put power to a long carbon conductor, when the linkage hits it, you can get a slightly different resistance to ground (The selectric isn't earthed anyway). You can measure this to see which typebar is pressed, and then input that to a computer.
Problem would be that the auto-repeat keys wouldn't work. Oh well. You could use the IDX key as function, though.
I'd carry around the smallest tablet with USB ever, and use my 44 LB typewriter with it.
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Edit: Not enough room under the typebars, but there's plenty under the leaf springs on the front. One big issue with this idea is that you wouldn't get NKRO, though. You could get some microswitches, though. Or maybe a capacitive sensor or something.Not enough room for an optical sensor between each, unless you mount it elsewhere.
Shift, spacebar, and and tab would have to be wired up separately ofcourse, since they don't use leaf springs. Capslock is the same as shift, so it's no issue.
Could easily be done, though. You might have enough room on the top to get the top bit that sticks up to poke at something. I like the idea of those microswitches with levers on them. Solder them to a PCB (for strength/stability), wire to teensy, take the tape out (unless you want a hard copy) and be done. Best keyboard ever. It's "linear" (technically slightly logarithmic, I suppose) but highly tactile as the ball slams into the page, shaking the typewriter. That's hapitc feedback/tactility for you.
Instead of having a speaker like those old zenith/wang/whatever keyboards have, just put a solenoid in there to poke the case when a keystroke is registered. Effective, awesome, etc.
