Driving this hype train are some short viral videos that show the founder hitting 500+ WPM on this crazy thing. FYI, that is fast enough to get you banned from typing competitions, including the monkeytype leaderboard. Those apes forbid chorded input altogether, and automatically throw out entries above 300 WPM. It acheives these insane speeds through clever mechanical design and, of course, firmware.
The Charachorder resembles a pair of rock climbing holds connected with a length of extruded aluminium. Each hold has nine little golf tee-looking joysticks sprouting out of it, which take the place of keys. Charachorder keyboard has 3D switches. There are three golf tees for the thumb to wiggle, four for the fingers, and two extras beneath the middle and ring fingers for arrow keys and mouse control.
Instead of using up-down motion like a regular keyswitch, each little joystick has D-pad directionality for four-way input per digit. The founders claim that 300+ unique inputs and over 17 billion chord combinations are possible without lifting a finger.
This would take quite a bit of muscle memory adjustment to get used to!
See https://hackaday.com/2022/01/12/the-charachorder-keyboard-is-too-fast-for-competition/
#technology #keyboards #hardware #charachorder