I tend to find uses for my laptop where I want to show my screen to someone but not have the input available to them (mainly special needs students).
I have a small wireless keyboard/trackpad that I use if I need to change something, but some of the youth I deal with have a lot of trouble with restraint when theres so many buttons in front of them.
Disconnecting the keyboard and or trackpad would be the easiest option. Are you on Windows 11, or a Linux distro? You may be able to just disable them in software.
If a non-working keyboard and trackpad would be upsetting for some of the students, perhaps add an adhesive vinyl sheet over them to put them out of sight & remove the expectation that there are controls. Adhesive vinyl sheets are available in a multitude of colors.
Disconnecting them might help. Iâm on windows 11.
The students have less of a care what the buttons do and more of a desire to just push them which can mess with whatever weâre trying to show them.
I like this idea from a hardware hacking perspective: a spacer is an excellent starting point to making your own âwhateverâ. Easy to cut out openings for whatever it is you want to make if you can start with a cheapish spacer.
Just a quick idea⌠i think theyd be easy to do and be another cheaper add on to a keyboard deck. Having a medium sized dry erase module in place of the numpad would be fun.
We prototyped a sticky note medium sized input module with a slim pen holder.
That is horrible, I love it so much.
on this, it wouldnât be hard to diy. They sell dry erase and chalkboard paint that works reasonably well a person could likely just use that on their included spacers. Might need, at worst, to sand it down a bit. With a 3d print module that juts out to hold a pen youâre set. or, just cut it off a dollar store dry erase board and hot glue it to the back.
I cannot wait to see the insanely niche or mostly useless junk people are going to make for this system. Why not have an integrated fidget spinner, scratchpad like discussed here, magnetic screw bed (careful with that one), or if someone can shove it in even a tomagochi style pet with that prototype screen.
Iâll participate but mostly in spirit. Imma make a self destruct module. Every time you open it, a small spike comes up to break your screen when you close it.
Have you guys thought about an e-ink module? you could take notes directly on it and save the notes in an app.
Awesome.
I suspect the projected price got that idea filed away⌠neat though.
That might even be doable with the current LED matrix.
The original tamagotchi was 32x16; the current matrix is 9x34. It might make more sense to use a small e-ink or LCD display at any rate in order to minimize power draw.
Why were all these unrelated ideas and discussions merged into this one thread? This doesnât seem very useful or readable to me.
I have actual hardware being fabbed for at least three of the ideas mega-merged here (touchpad with buttons, seven segment display input module, âintegrated drawing tabletâ) and I guess Iâm going to have to open new threads for them now? Iâm not going to keep posting progress updates to get buried in a mega thread.
This is a megathread for âideasâ or âfeature requestsâ only with no progress. if you plan to make any of these things, please feel free to create new posts for each so we can follow your progress.
Look two and three posts above yours for evidence the most recent merge was a bit overaggressive.
if there are any posts we have merged by mistake please DM me or any of our moderators and we will split them again.
Has anybody considered a cat deterrent module, to keep it from walking across the keyboard?
Iâm thinking perhaps a glue trap on each side of the keyboard. Or maybe metal pads that deliver electric shocks. The former would be easier to implement of course, but it does come with some downsides.
While that would be the most effective I think op may still want their cat.
