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Show HN: Clawtype v2.1 – a one-hand chorded USB keyboard and mouse [video]

by akavel on 4/4/25, 10:32 PM with 27 comments

Written in Rust (embassy), running on a SparkFun ProMicro RP2040 board, with an MPU6050 gyroscope. Based on the Chordite idea from John W. McKown (https://web.archive.org/web/20220201061603/http://chordite.c...). Intended for use with XR glasses I recently bought. Currently my typing speed is still rather slow, but my skill is graduably improving and at a noticeable pace, and I can and do some vim coding in my hobby time. I plan to try and do a wireless (BLE) version next, hopefully running off a single AA NiMH battery. The code is at: https://github.com/akavel/clawtype

  • by barriteau on 4/5/25, 2:44 PM

    I'm an early adopter and long time user of the Tap Strap [1] and the TapXR [2], they solved for me the same OP's aspirations ;)

    There is some room for improvement, but it really works, flawlessly [3].

    [1] https://www.tapwithus.com/how-tapxr-works/

    [2] https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-xr/

    [3] https://www.tapwithus.com/how-tapxr-works/

  • by jonquark on 4/4/25, 10:52 PM

    I'm not a hardware tinkerer - but if there was a production version of this, I would buy it. But I guess I'm a niche market.

  • by runsonrum on 4/5/25, 4:43 AM

    Other one-handed keyboards with different input methods. All sorts of interesting custom keyboards as well.

    https://kbd.news/tag/one-handed/

  • by rendaw on 4/5/25, 1:55 AM

    This is awesome! Is there any support beyond the wrist, or how resistive is it when you press the buttons? Have you considered 2 hands too? Do you feel like you've maxed out the number of comfortably reachable keys? I guess you can't have keys off to the side since you can't move your hand relative to the keyboard. Does the thumb do anything currently?

    I'm in this niche market too... although I don't really have an immediate use case beyond someday being more portable. Also had some issues with XR glasses and fov being reduced further by eye-glass distance.

  • by HellsMaddy on 4/5/25, 7:04 AM

    Is this by chance inspired by the one handed keyboard from Children of Men?

    https://youtu.be/sJO0n6kvPRU at around 2:05

    One of my favorite scenes, by the way.

  • by droopyEyelids on 4/5/25, 12:57 AM

    This would be good for trying to get something done on the computer while managing a toddler

  • by spiritplumber on 4/5/25, 3:56 AM

    This is really cool, is it OK if we iterate on the design?

  • by fsiefken on 4/5/25, 6:56 AM

    An alternative one-handed keyboard design I like is the half keyboard by Edgar Matias. Personally I am not sure which one is better for typing half-dvorak or half-qwerty.

    http://edgarmatias.com/papers/hci96/ https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/1257-half-qwerty-one-...