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• [A] Slight TrueGame layout adjustment

  kelvinA • 05/25/2023 at 21:39 • 0 comments

  For some reason or another, I keep gravitating towards these Asus Ally vs Steam Deck videos that are making the rounds over YouTube:

  The talk about controls came up and it made me think of what I'm doing for Tetent. I've also been annoyed that I've got everything except the (in my opinion) seldom used joystick button. 

  I'm taking advantage of the fact that, unlike with Tetent, you can't actually use the joystick AND buttons at the same time, and I'm putting the joystick press on the end of the Tetrinsic active area:
  

  I've also corrected the position of the XYAB buttons. If you were looking at Tetent from the top, the layout shows the left side of Tetrinsics. For TrueGame, the left side would have left, up, right, down instead of X, A, B, Y. I can't find any actual numbers, but I'd imagine that the order of most to least used of the 4 buttons is A, B, X, Y. Like with Shift, there's some force between position 4 and 5, and 5 is "spring loaded" as if it was a button perpendicular to the sliding axis.

  Replace Joystick Button, Analog X and Analog Y with Left Click, Cursor X, Cursor Y respectively and there's some kind of Steam Deck trackpad alternative.

• [T] Too big to fail.

  kelvinA • 05/22/2023 at 20:03 • 0 comments

  So I've recently looked into my main-display and 5G celluar options for #Leti: the Tetent + PC handheld concept that doesn't yet have a project code. Now, I just looked at what buy-it-now options there are, especially 5G enabled options, in the portable x86 market (PDAs, laptops, tablets, UMPCs) and it was painful to see. 1080p 14"+ screens (so low PPD), costs £1,500+ yet doesn't have a 2TB option, 16GB soldered RAM... STILL! In 2023! It doesn't seem like much has changed since 2020.

  Leti is expected to be around the size of the steam deck, and if I can find a case similar to the steam deck one, it would be a more portable and convenient solution than any laptop, tablet and not-actually-pocketable-UMPCs. Someone at The Verge just wrote about the elastic strap that allows such portable convenience.

  I think this realisation promotes Tetent from "Is this too big to fail?" to "It's too big to fail.", which basically means it's an un-shelvable / un-cancellable project (unless something better shows up). I've tried my best to try and sidestip Tetent/Tetrinsic entirely (because I'd rather not spend X hours a day for Y months mining for a solution), but I cannot offer myself any ideas for an acceptable alterntative solution.

• [T] 1440px use case... fails.

  kelvinA • 05/14/2023 at 11:02 • 0 comments

  • If Tetent is plugged straight into Teti, I can see myself opting for the 15.6" monitor instead of the 2.9" 1440p most of the time.
  • If I'm using Tetent remotely, there doesn't seem to be a 120Hz remote desktop client. Even if there was, I'd still require a good internet connection, which is unlikely.
  • I don't run Linux applications.

  Thus, it seems that Tetent without the 1440px, Tetent Taic and Tetent UMPC are the 3 versions that sound like it'll be worthwile to invest time into.

• [E6][R] UMPC idea: Leti

  kelvinA • 04/21/2023 at 15:24 • 0 comments

  [17 May: I've now made this idea into its own project]

  [21 April]

  I really should get to a MVP Tetent out of the door ASAP so that Reality(TM) can throw me under the bus ASAP and tell me why my solution doesn't work, even when mitigating as many possible negative scenarios as I can.

  Why? 

  It seems I've passed the proverbial event horizon; I'm losing time if I work on Tetent, and losing time if not working on Tetent, simply because I'm thinking of it and wondering how I could make it better or adapt it for a new usecase. 

  In terms of making it better, yesterday I talked about the plan for the Tetent Taic, a photovoltaic variant of Tetent that replaces all the LCD screens. For possible usecases, today I'm thinking of a UMPC.

  First, some history

  I owned a GX1 Pro for... about a week, which I called Aeti (pronounced "Aey... Tee-yai") because of the powerful NVidia RTX GPU hype (eg 2080Ti, 3060Ti) and it was hopefully going to replace the second-hand Sharp HC-4100 (named A4100) that I wrote electronic notes on (instead of the little A7 booklets I was using previously, hence the whole "A" thing). Yes, the technological difference of Windows CE + 8MB of RAM + mono-LCD to Windows 10, a 1920x1200px truecolour screen, Thunderbolt 4 enabled, 4C8T, 16GB RAM device was very nice to think about. 

  Unfortunately, there were small issues that compounded into sending it back, namely that a) the WiFi connectivity was directional, b) the screen didn't bend 180 degrees (aka, to my face when held, but to my chest) and c) there was only 16GB of RAM.

  This was in the time where I was struggling to obtain parts for #Teti [gd0022] and was faced with a decision: Wait it out, or sell off the components and double down on portability, skipping 16" laptops and going all the way down to this 7" device. While I returned it, I still loved the thing and the possiblities, though it doesn't look like OneNetbook is coming out with a second edition now that their hands are full with the OneXPlayer. 

  The idea

  You know how I started building Teti "because I can't make a 2 in 1 laptop"? Well, a UMPC in a Tetent form factor could be even better than the laptop form factor for me. 

  I've been occasionally wondering if there was a solution where Tetrinsic was integrated into a traditional laptop, but this was before Tetent Concept3. The idea for the laptop was to have each half spring loaded (like a pen) and pop up out of the chassis to an ergonomic angle.

  Now, the idea is to create something like #Tetent TwySize [gd0040] but using an x86 CPU.

  Computing hardware

  Framework motherboards now exist:

  At this point, they're essentially a suite of (relatively) high performance single-board computers that seem to continuously get the latest chips. 

  When I was researching the GX1, I notieced that the 1135G7 and 1165G7 (the GX1 Pro has the similar 1160G7) were rather close in benchmarks, and that the former was the value buy, if given the option. Considering that I ended up upgrading from an 7500U 2C4T laptop (Deti) to a 11600K 6C12T desktop (Teti) and that desktop only feels 33% faster in general despite being 100% faster in single-core benchmarks, I'd still say that the £299 1135 is the better choice, especially considering the DDR4 to DDR5 price difference (see image below). A nice thing is that the 1135G7 can take up to 64GB of RAM, just like I've got 64GB in Teti! Many previous laptop chips seemed to max out at 16GB for some reason.

  The price (and the difference) is much lower from 3rd party vendors:

  Read more »

• [E1][A][T] External Look, Locked.

  kelvinA • 04/08/2023 at 12:49 • 0 comments

  [Edit 1] 

  I've been staring at the design more, and I think I'll be going with the white bezels. The reason is because there's still much more white visible from Tetent itself than the bezels from the first person perspective, and the bezels themselves are much less obvious from the 3rd person perspective, allowing the design to have a centred, black square when all screens are off.

  Now this looks like something I can see myself taking out of my pocket and the design not being too over the top. It does look like some fantasy elf / driad technology though, which is 😁👍 for me.

  [Edit 1: End]

  I thought the monitor integration design looked like a star, and so I thought the Tetrinsic background would work perfectly for the render. Now I'm playing Sonic: Reach For The Stars, agreeing with the lyrics.

  Internal features and software features are still quite likely to increase, but externally, I don't think there will be any visible changes from new features. I'm hoping the BOM is around the £300 range. 

  Speaking of internals, I've done some research on USB PCB creation, electromagnetic radiation and the pros/cons of 2 vs 4 layer PCB's, and I'll be playing it safe with the 4 layer PCB for both Tetrinsic and Tetent boards. 

  I'm also going to take advantage of each Tetrinsic having USB capabilities and just wiring one Tetrinsic to 1 port/device, and then having a selector similar to input selection menus on TVs. Right now, the selection would be [USB Port 1, USB Port 2, Internal SBC]. I'd need some way to toggle between using the port for Tetrinsic I/O and using it for SBC I/O.

  I'd also like to mention that the FOV of the 1440px display is low enough that these cheap magnifying glasses (with led lighs) don't cause any annoying chromatic abberations of the content. The focal distance, which is a tad too short for laptop/desktop viewing distances, is right in the zone needed for this handheld mini-monitor. Additionally, since I don't have to look down occasionally for a mouse/keyboard, the potential chance of eye fatigue (from constantly changing focus) is reduced.

  The only main concern now is: Will the solution fail, due to ergonomics? 

  I consider everything else from PCB creation to firmware programming to the mental overhead using this device as "Skill Issue". It is only if Tetent is damaging to my fingers where the solution will fail. Unfortunately, in these 15 months of research, I've noticed that the tolerance for an ergonomic solution is quite low. I guess that's somewhat expectable, since higher bandwidth electronic signals are usually less tolerant to PCB design imperfections too.

• [M] Quad Symmetry

  kelvinA • 04/07/2023 at 22:27 • 0 comments

  ---

  Subject: Aesthetic Compliance

  adjusts glasses
  

  The bezel is larger due to the LCD chin, and the dark grey was chosen as a nicer, mellow colour (compared to white or black) to stare at for hours. 

  I do acknowledge that black looks better from a purely aesthetic position as well as matches with Teti's 4K monitors:

  I'm not letting this feature die off so easily.

  - Officer of Feature Investment 

  ---

  Re: Aesthetic Compliance

  Impressive speed, but I've had to make 2 alterations. The black bezel will be chosen and the nauseating rounded corners were replaced with small filleted chamfers.

  With the grey, there were 4 different colours, when a 3 colour palette would look sharper and more uniform:

  And, as you said, black bezels match with the monitors for Teti.

  - From the Aesthetics Compliance Division

• [A] A solution... is rejected, due to aesthetics.

  kelvinA • 04/07/2023 at 20:25 • 0 comments

  Dear Feature Investment Officer,

  The mutant mould "design tweak" (pictured below) to include the 1440px screen (and a second USBC) best be a late April Fools joke and you're about to say sike soon.

  There's no way I'm signing it off when it originally looked as simplistic and moden as this:

  "It's a 3rd person perspective; from my view, nothing's changed." is not an excuse. This may be an amateur project, but will adhere to professional design standards.

  2 centered USBC ports and a centred logo, or another solution that obtains XY design symmetry, will be acceptable.

  - From the Aesthetics Compliance Division

• [A] Bigram layout tweaks, and a virtual typing attempt

  kelvinA • 04/07/2023 at 12:29 • 0 comments

  The first thing that's changed is swapping the location of H and L. The reason is because of this article of why the creator of Workman had issues with Colemak, talking about bigram frequency.

  From the fingers I have, I get force feedback but not positional feedback. I also expect that less movement translates to less mental overhead. This is the reason I'm trying to keep similar characters under the same position, and why it's 6 zones 7 levels instead of the other way around. 

  With this small change, something (that sounds like a common phrase) such as "they were" only require the fingers to be in zone 1 or 5. If not using Tetent TestCut, this would be 2 chords: "they we" and "re".

  Other changes

  I'm also thinking of splitting up the weights into blocks of 2, since when the finger is planning to go though multiple levels, it could be difficult to keep track of the haptic vibrations. Additionally, the top level is kind of light, so spacing things out could prevent mis-clicks into level 2.
  

  Thus:

  1. 40g
  2. 52g
  3. 60g
  4. 72g
  5. 80g
  6. 92g
  7. 100g

  This changes the haptic of, say, Ctrl, from BZBZBZBZBZBZ to BZ-BZBZ-BZBZ-BZ. I'm running the mental simulations now and it's a substantial improvement for knowing what level I'm on. 

  I'm also swapping Windows and Enter. There's not a lot of keyboard shortcuts that use the Win key, but I can imagine pressing the enter key much more, especially in an order sensitive manner.

  Thus, the updated Tetent TrueType layout:

  Simulating typing on a keyboard that doesn't exist:

  My goal was to cycle between fingers on every character, but sometimes I did get a chord in, such as "ll" and "e,". 
  

  The errors are because I still somehow hit the wrong physical key when marking "I've pressed this key on the virtual Tetent". 

  Most of the mental overhead was me verifying that I simulated all haptics. After that, it was "What row was this character?" and then "Oh yeah! I could've chorded a space along with that character!".

  So far, I haven't felt any layout changes I'd want to make. Shift 1st was a major assist, as I just had to drag Finger5 back and boom I could get a capital G.

• [E1][T][M] Tetent with 1440px screen?

  kelvinA • 04/05/2023 at 09:42 • 0 comments

  So I've been staring at the current Tetent model for over a week, wondering if there's anything that I'd want to add. The main question is if whatever I want to add actually requires a Tetrinsic change. This idea isn't that and concerns my possible use cases for Tetent. I was thinking of possible tasks I could get done if there was sometihng like an RPi 0 installed, but most of my tasks are still better done on my main PC, which currently is Teti.

  I've got about 60 x 65mm of otherwise empty surface area on the back, and I know about the 2.9" 120Hz 1440*1440px screens that are like £17 on AliExpress (driver sold seperately). I also know that a cheap, small (ie sub 10") USBC monitor is hard to come by, with most being 13.3" / 15.6". 

  At 120 pixels per degree (PPD), the same as Teti's 4K portable monitors from 62cm away, this 1440px screen would be 25cm away from my eyes, which just so happens to also be the ergonomic default position for my arms if held to face my face. However, that distance increases to 50cm if my arms are resting on my lap.

  The screen brightness would be fine for indoor and low-light usage, but is unlikely to be outdoor visible. There's no plug sockets outside for Teti either though.

  Anyway, the idea is to have the screen on a hinge and then USBC video on over the feed, which is exactly the same amount of pixels as 120Hz 1080p FHD. This is likely to be an extension project after I've got a basic Tetent that works.

  I've been using Teti with a custom 1440*1440px resolution and no scaling for a handful of hours now, and it's actually quite usable, even at my usual viewing distance of around 68cm. The only main change was to set the taskbar to auto hide.

  The peak bandwidth is 6.3Gbit, so I should only be limited by the time it takes to create a driver PCB and not the accessiblity of chips and/or their datasheets. Alternatively, and perhaps more ideally, there's support for 1080p 120Hz over USB 3.0; I know that the cheaper Windows devices especially usually have USB 3.0 these days but don't have video through USBC, and I doubt anyone would be gaming (anything intensive) on a 2.9" 1:1 aspect ratio screen. Hopefully, there's 12mbit of bandwidth spared for actually communicating with Tetent.

  I'm also looking into seeing what remote desktop solutions are out there, mainly looking for a 120Hz capable solution and mainly because Me In The Past decided that USBC video out was a feature I could skip when buying my Realme Q3 Pro. I don't think the bandwidth would allow for such a solution though.

  The rear now starts to look cluttered. The rounded corners make me think of the iPads, but not a fan of them when looking at them for more than a few minutes, instead preferring sharp ones:

  There's also likely to be some... geometric challenges when it comes to folding it out:

  [The Next Day] I'm going through with it, mainly for a subproject of fun inside a project for survival. (Tetent is my way out of an "All Routes Lead To Doom" situation.)

  I've scanned Panelook and the LS029B3SX04 is indeed the best choice. The cool thing about this one which isn't seemingly supported by the 1-year-older LS029B3SX02 is that the duty cycle is designed to be under 100%. To balance maximum brightness while cutting down motion blur, I'm planning to have a duty of 50%. This is similar to the Sharp "240Hz" smartphone strategy, which actually just blackens the display every other frame.

  It turns out that the full datasheet for the TC358870XBG is over 300 pages, which is the chip I'm planning to use since any SBC I could potentially...

  Read more »

• [E2][R] Input devices

  kelvinA • 03/29/2023 at 14:14 • 0 comments

  I just wanted to do one last research round of less known / more unique input devices before I stop looking and focus on creating Tetent. 

  Devices for content creators

  Suprisingly, the Orbital2 is a device that costs 2X a SpaceMouse, which was already considered a high end device for 6 degree navigation. I don't think this device can even do more than 3, but does have 8 capacitive buttons. I thought, perhaps, it's the software integration that commands the high price, but many reviews say that its subpar. 3Dconnexion should look into something like this since it looks like they're leaving money on the table.

  [Mar 30 Edit] WOUGH!!! 3DConnexion did create a spacemouse with 8 buttons, made between 2003 and 2009. It's called the SpaceTraveller and honestly it looks modern even today. Cost $199 back in the day.

  The current SpaceMouse Compact seems like a downgrade in comparison to this.

  [/Mar 30 Edit]

  The XENCELABS Quick Keys is a nice looking device. This looks to be easy inspiration for an editing layout for Tetent.

  It's a shame that there doesn't exist a trackball with the quantity of buttons that the Shuttle Pro V2 has. This + trackball was what I was looking for when looking for a replacement to my 12-thumbkey mouse. I don't really have the deskspace for a macro pad + trackball.

  Loupedeck Products

  I first found the Loupedeck+, but it turns out this company makes a few non-typical devices. I started this search to see if Tetent's £250 - 300 expected price would still have a market if it was a commercial product. 

  The Loupedeck+ is targetted towards photo / video editors. There's many rotary encoders on this, which is to allow the user to input changes into multiple values at the same time (such as highlights and shadows of an image), but the thing that notably got my attention was actually the arrow keys in the bottom right of the device, implying that quick non-mouse navigation is important. This device costs a tad over £200.

  At over twice the price, there's the Loupedeck CT which seems to have LED backlit buttons and LCD backlit dial + buttons. The video below looks to be a good insight to what functionality a power user would like from a dedicated editing input device:

  Trackball Remote (and other handhelds)

  So, inspired to look to see if there has ever been a trackball that has had a decent number of buttons, and I stumbled on this beautiful, modern looking InterAct SV-2020 remote:

  The product actually looks better than the image on the box:

  I can see that this was made in a time when USB wasn't widespread. Since there aren't any current or new input devices I know about, I had a feeling that the past would have unseen, interesting finds. I really like this one and it's a shame the idea died off in the past. Now I'm struggling to find a trackball with more than 4 buttons (remember 2 of them have to be used for left / right click).

  Another device from the past is the iGrip. Ideally, I'd like to be typing 50+ wpm on Tetent in about 2 hours, not 2 months as claimed with the iGrip.

  IFYOO GTP01, a handheld device that either comes in pink/white or black/yellow-orange. I'm very much more of a fan of the white keys, and I'd like to imagine a milky green edition. This one seems quite interesting because of the trackpad design and the rear buttons, as well as the assymetrical grip

  Cube Keyboard

  I first found this when I first designed #Tetent TestCut [gd0139], but the Super Cuber X7 is a device that has many of the things that I'm trying to put into Tetent, such as a soundspeaker, alarms and a cursor moving input. I don't have plans for FM radio or a flashlight though.

  AR / VR input devices?

  The good news about AR and VR is that the keyboard and mouse is unsuitable as an input method, thus research into new input devices is underway. I thought this would be a good place to see if there has been any developments, but I found...

  Read more »

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