Ok, a friend of mine has this awsome idea to make a chair similar to ones you see in scifi movies, like starwars. each arm of the chair has half a keyboar, split like the ergonomic keyboards you can buy. a trackball or maby even a mouse would be on the right side. Then a monitor is hung over the chair attached on a swingable arm (think dentist office light that they shine in your face) that swivels around. The pc is housed in the base of the chair. the swinging arm is easy enough to find, but i have yet to find a keyboard that actually splits into two, the closest are the keyboards that are curved and have a gap between keys... will i need to make my own, or can i buy one that can split by itself?
That sounds like fun, but it also sounds like that keyboard would take alot of getting used to. For the swingarm, you might be best to build it yourself, unless you can just get a hinged mount that only moves in one way (think door hinge). Because those medical suspension arms are hella expensive. I would suggest looking at the spring-arm lamps and figuring out how to scale one up for a LCD.
Well Gnoff, I've actually been working on splitting up two keyboards into seperate parts for this exact purpose- and I've pretty much given up. It's damn hard to mess with keyboards. However, things like http://www.fentek-ind.com/modular.htm#ergoflex do exist, or used to- if you're serious, you might be able to track down one or two.
Can you not rig 2 keyboards to a pc and just cut away all the keys you dont want, i.e. you have the first half of 1 keyboard on your left and the 2nd half of another keyboard on the right. Just an idea that would save having to cut and rig 1 keyboard into 2 pieces.
it would probably screw up the membrane. I'd say the best way would be to take an old one without any of the fancy media keys and experiment using that. I'm not sure if you can solder onto one of those... I'm pretty sure if would melt, but you never know.
I had the same problem with trying to solder onto an EL sheet, easy way was to pierce a hole and thread some wire through and tie it, I covered mine in heatshrink to keep it in place and now works flawlessly. If you use 2 keyboards you only have to cut the keyboard cover because you can fold the membrane up and hide it.
Intergreate the computer onto the chair too, along with a battery pick, the ultimate moving computer! An alternative to a split keyboard is to have it slide down from the monitor, or to have it swing out from the arm?
the easiest way would be to dedicate 2 usb ports (like obzelite), and chop/mod it do desired shape (without fuxoring the membrane) and folding the membrane (the keys you don't want) underneath the keypad out of the way. maybe incorporate a hub into the chair, so you could get an extra 2 ports on an armrest (assuming it's 4 port)
If you look @ the membrane you can see that certain keys go to certain ports on the circuitboard, If you got 2 Identical Keyboards and folded the membrane you could route the right hand bit to the left and plug it in there. I might just hav a go at this. Also when folding the membrane make sure you place some paper or something to prevent the keys being pressed by the membrane contact. Best thing to do would be to get som adhesive wire or something, does anyone know wer I could get some?
Hey about clock timings, i assumed it would be two ps/2 keyboards, usb should work fine. One suggestion, you can buy 4 port usb 2 hubs from 7dayshop.co.uk for £5, you could hard-wire the two keyboards to two ports of the hub, leaving two extras - maybe near the arm - rest for memory keys etc?
