Optimus Keyboard, From Russia With Love !!! Options

[NickTheGreek]

These Russians made a keyboard with OLED display buttons!!!

Imagine a keyboard where each key is a small TFT screen ; you change the language, the display changes, you press CAPS LOCK, you see CAPITALS, you go to play MAME, you see direction pad signs instead of keys !!!

FANTASTIC !

[NickTheGreek]

The Russians are having patent problems... in the US

read this :

Artemy Lebedev might have some trouble
selling his attention-grabbing Optimus keyboard
here in the States β€” turns out some dude by the
name of Elkin Acevedo beat him to the punch and
received a patent for a β€œDisplay keyboard” way
back in 1998. The patent abstract describes the
Optimus almost exactly, too:

    A display keyboard including a conventional
keyboard having an upper edge, lower edge,
and pair of side edges. A plurality of display
keys are situated on the keyboard. Each display
key has a liquid crystal display, light emitting
diode display, or any future state of the art
display invention situated thereon for depicting
alphanumeric characters and indicia. Finally, for
controlling the operation of the present invention,
a conventional computer is connected to the keyboard
and adapted to depict via the display keys characters
and indicia relevant to the function of the key during a
current software application. To prevent confusion and
eliminate clutter, the display keys that are not relevant
to the software are rendered blank. In essence, all of
the keys of the display keyboard have display capabilities,
but it is at the discretion of the manufacture which keys
should be able to display.

Supposedly Elkin is trying to commercialize the Display keyboard, we’re trying to get in touch with him to find out how far along he might be with that