aerkiaga's blog

I would like to use this week's post to write a review of the Charachorder Two, the new input device I received last week. I have done many other things besides trying it out and practicing on it, but I believe this will be of greater interest for anyone.

The Device

In case you haven't read my previous post, the CC2 is an ergonomic, programmable, hybrid chorded and non-chorded keyboard. By “ergonomic”, I mean it has a unique shape, with two halves that can be split apart or bolted on supports and that fit nicely under the hands; each one has nine joystick-like 3D switches that can be pressed in different ways with little force.

By “programmable”, I mean it has an apparently custom-made chip running CCOS, a firmware that allows everything to be customized, from timings and layouts to chords (more on that later). To do so, you use a Chromium-compatible web interface, but many settings can be changed using just the device, with a specialized interface that can be shown on anything that accepts keystrokes.

Then, I feel I need to explain the whole chording matter. A chorded keyboard is one on which you type by pressing multiple keys simultaneously. They are used in contexts like court transcription, which need very high typing speeds. The CC2 is that, but also not: if you move a switch in some direction, a plain old character appears; if you move more than one at the same time (and you have programmed that chord before), an entire word or phrase is sent to the computer. You can also program other actions as chord outputs, and chords can be combined in some really cool ways.

At the end of the day, your computer only sees a regular keyboard, which sends scancodes through a USB port. Remember this.

Physical description

Lighter than I expected, with a matte plastic finish. Comes with an elegant travel case included. I didn't attempt to separate the two halves (which are joined by default with an aluminium bar). Small rubber pads keep the device from sliding over the table, and there are screw holes so one can bolt the halves on e.g. the armrest of a chair.

The keycaps themselves seem 3D printed, not with a great quality though. At least they send 3 spare ones in case you lose/break the existing ones. The switches themselves work really smoothly, although I would have loved some more clickiness.

Character Entry

Easier to learn than I expected. They provide a web interface to learn the device, which I used for a few minutes a day and got to about 20 WPM in a week. The default layout is pretty good, it allows for some common letter combinations to be typed especially fast.

I was slightly worried that I would encounter problems to type using the Spanish layout, but turns out it works out quite nicely. Just a slight modification to the base layout to be able to type <, > and }, and ready to go! Common characters like ñ or ´ are well-placed by default.

Typing regular prose is physically pretty comfortable. I have tried it for programming without much success; in my experience, a regular QUERTY keyboard with Vim is enough, but it may be the case that once I get faster on the CC2 I'll be able to get more out of it...

Chorded Entry

Here I did find some issues related to my keyboard layout. First of all, the Device Manager and documentation overall don't do much hand-holding if you're outside the US layout. If anything, the Device Manager makes it even more confusing, by translating some stuff to your current layout while leaving other unchanged. You also need to be really careful about the codes you use to prevent garbled output, and dead keys aren't very well supported yet on chords.

I created my own chord library, by adding words both in order of frequency and using a weighting algorithm in a script I wrote so I could prioritize words that'll help me in my job. For example, I can easily type the word “paciente” (patient) by pinching two fingers to p and t. I've also added chords for actions like deleting the last word or switching on Caps Lock.

The default timing settings for chords make it really difficult to learn at first, so I had to increase them a bit.

Overall

I'd give this device 5 stars for what it has managed to accomplish and how easy it makes to type fast (even on a different layout), but I must warn that it lacks some much-needed polish. I expect the documentation and firmware to improve over time though.