Patent Application
20130307777
The invention relates to a portable plug-and-play computer human input device with expanded capabilities. More specifically, this invention relates to an expanded mouse based human input device that performs pointer control function, mouse button functions and user data input function using standard HID protocols.
Despite of the intuitive operation style and the emulation ability of the touch screens, the keyboard and the mouse are still the most popular human input devices (HID) for computers at present time. With the convenience of computer graphics interface, the pointer control and mouse key functions have already become just as important, if not more, as the keyboard input functions for almost all computer users.
Keyboards are designed primarily for “one letter at a time” alphanumeric character user data input. Therefore, limited by their linear buffer implementation, no key board is capable to store two alphanumeric keys, modifier keys excluded, in parallel, even if they are indeed pressed simultaneously by the user. Mouse buttons, on the other hand, are event generators to alert the CPU about the user's intent to take certain actions at the present screen pointer location. Therefore, mouse keys may be simultaneously used and registered to activate all the related events at the same time. With this property the mouse has grown to become an even more important input device than keyboard for certain types of computer applications.
Traditional keyboard implementations require a relatively large surface area for key placement. In order to reduce the surface area without overcutting the size of the keys, some keyboards are designed without a full key set. For example, the invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,273 uses a 3 by 4 array of buttons to implement the entire alphanumeric key set; each button carries multiple key assignments, which are selected sequentially by repeating button pushes. Other inventions, such as the devices described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,042,777, 7,492,286 B2 and 7202853 B2, require multiple steps or serious user training for character selection. Consequently, both the ergonomics and the efficiency may suffer greatly in these devices.
Prior art mouse implementation frequently uses an easy-to-grab form factor so as to facilitate accurate pointer control by hand movement. The form factor, including size requirement, limit the number of buttons that can be reasonably implemented on the device without seriously degrading its ergonomics and efficiency. The majority of the present mouse offers 3 to 5 keys.
Deficiencies with prior art mouse and keyboards can be further illustrated from a few applications' view point. For example, the Audience Response Systems (ARS's) collecting audience feedback in real-time to help facilitate discussions and concept promotion have been used for teaching, researching, test-taking and voting applications. From business meetings to classroom teaching, when properly applied, ARS has demonstrated its value in producing measurable improvement of presentation effectiveness, partially because the audience can give feedback in a pre-defined simple form anonymously and conveniently and that the feedback can be reviewed by the presenter almost instantaneously.
Traditionally, all ARS's use a handheld device, commonly called the “clicker”, for the audience to select and send their responses to a question. Because the uses of the ARS's have been focused on collecting user feedback in a pre-defined form, most clickers are designed as miniature keypads or TV remotes with a smaller set of keys, each key preprogrammed to a specific command for data selection and sending, for instance. Some clickers also offer a set of arrow keys and/or a small touch screen for crude pointer position control and/or short text messaging to the host CPU. However, because of performance limitations and application time constraints, they have not been used as much as expected.
Most ARS hand device are wireless device for convenience. Three wireless technologies are currently used for ARS applications. They are: infrared (IR), Radio Frequency (RF) and Wi-Fi. The IR ARS's require an unobstructed line of sight between a carefully installed receiver and the clickers. And, the more receivers in use, the more potential there is for signal interference. The RF ARS's do not require line-of-sight transmission and with a single receiver capable of working with over 1000 clickers. In theory, the Wi-Fi systems may include almost any Wi-Fi based input device; including: smart phones, PDAs, laptops, tablets, and etc., for as long as the Web browsers on the individual devices interact well with the host hardware, while the ARS application software is executed on a host computer or a network server. Therefore, it may offer the highest flexibility and the lowest cost of ownership to the meeting host. In reality, however, unless the entire Wi-Fi ARS, from the infrastructure to the individual user input devices, are qualified and carefully managed, the performance and the reliability of an ad-hoc ARS using user-supplied input devices can be very unpredictable. With the additional risk of the audience getting distracted by other on-line activities when they use their personal Wi-Fi devices in an ARS session, the Wi-Fi based ad-hoc ARS's are facing difficulties to be accepted as serious productivity tools.
Because almost all the non-ad-hoc ARS clickers are designed to be passive response devices, they provide no practical means for the user to actively interact with the presentation host or with the other audience. For example, a participant may need to mark, draw or even drag-and-drop items displayed on the presentation screen to explain the reason of his answer to a question. These operations require precision pointer control that is beyond the ability of all prior art clickers except one. The AVerPen from AverMedia INFORMATION is a pen style wireless clicker system based on a proprietary technology. The system operates in groups of 5 units: a master unit and 4 student units. The master unit is a wireless optical mouse without the clicker functions. It is the only unit in the group connecting to the CPU and responsible for all 5 units' communication to the CPU. The students units are controlled by the master unit and must go through the master unit to connect to and communicate with the CPU. The student unit can't be used as a regular mouse or an independent input device. It has 6 selection buttons for answer selection and can only be used with the AVer software for hand drawing input. The AVerPen master unit carries a retail price of over USD 100.00 a piece, many times higher than the average price of a mouse.
The multi-mouse computer technology developed recently allows multiple computer mice to be used simultaneously and independently on a CPU without interfering each other makes the traditional mouse, or, any pointer control device, a familiar and economic interactive device for computer based group interactive activities, especially when drag-and-drop or hand-drawn pattern creations on a display screen are needed. The particular multi-mouse software from Microsoft, called MultiPoint, for example, further opens up the possibility of using the mouse keys to simulate the clicker functions in the MS PowerPoint environment without the typical clicker's compatibility issues.
The primary issues today with using the prior existed mouse for multi-mouse application is the lack of user data input function. That is, typical computer mouse offer 3 to 5 mouse keys which are not suitable for data input use. Even when a key chording method is to be used for user data input, considering that user may not be able to operate more than 3 keys at a time, a 5-key mouse would be limited to the possible total permutations of 25 and lacking feedback in any form for user to confirm their input value. Additionally, user would have to either use a reference card or take training before start using the key chording input method for data input. These practices are not only impractical but also exposed to the risk of user data corruption due to accidental unintended key presses.
Many mouse and keyboard integrated devices exist. For example, the invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,480 integrates a keypad into a mouse body to allow user to either type of functions depending on the position of a switch. Another prior art device described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,130,200 B2 offers a more convenient keyboard interface and mode selection mechanism. Although these devices may work well as a standalone input device, they don't work for the multi-mouse supplication because the inputs from the multiple keyboards would interfere and overlap each other.
Another potential multi-mouse application is the computer gaming, which would allow multiple users to participate in a group game using a single computer. Up to date the mouse and the keyboard have been the only standard input devices utilized in the computer gaming industry programming practice. Because the player in most first- and third-person action games frequently use the mouse to move the first-person or an object, whose position may be represented by the invisible center-of-gravity point, for example, to the desired position while giving other commands, gaming mice often come with more buttons to allow the player to accomplish both actions using just the mouse. However, due to the physical limitations of the player and the device, the number of buttons can be comfortably placed on a regular size mouse is limited. The most common existing solution to this problem is to use a mapping table in the mouse driver so that the user may choose a different mapping table to modify the device command associated to each mouse key when needed. This solution does not work well for fast action games, especially when team-playing is involved, because the player must either put the game on pause or ignore his role in the game when going through the driver control interface to change the mapping table. Another existing solution to this problem is to expand the number of the buttons on the mouse. As an extreme example, the Razer Naga Epic Mouse has 17 buttons, 12 of them are placed in a tight cluster in the thumb area. According to a gamer's on-line comment, it took him 18 hours practice to get used to the buttons.
There is a clear need of a better solution to providing a larger set of mouse key commands in a generic pointer control device without the loss of convenience or ergonomics for the computer based group interaction applications.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved plug-and-play portable input device with a relatively small set of buttons yet capable of offering all the critical human input functions; including: pointer control, mouse buttons and a relatively large set of different input commands.
Another object of the present invention is to create an improved multi-mouse system using an improved mouse based device and input method so as to bring the user experience in group interactivities to a higher level. Another objective of the present invention is to provide a method to expand the applicability of a generic human input device to a computing or electronic device that may be incompatible to the input device or requiring a larger command set than what's available from the input device to operate originally.
A plug-and-play portable HID device with pointer control, mouse buttons and simple user data input functions without using a large number of keys or requiring user to learn chorded key patterns is provided. The pointer control module may be based on the optical navigation technology, commonly used by an optical mouse or a laser mouse, and the device is preferred to be implemented as a wireless device for user convenience sake.
Although the present invention may be implemented as a composite device, for practical considerations, including: cost, performance and compatibility, the present invention is preferred to be implemented using just one HID device identity, namely the mouse, so as to be able to operate on some of the most popular operating systems, such as the Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and 7 with up to 5 mouse buttons and a scroll wheel without the need of a custom device drivers. Additionally, the choice of the mouse device identity alone works perfectly well with the available multi-mouse technologies developed by Microsoft and other software companies to allow for multiple mouse operating on one computer independently and without interfering each other. To overcome the total lack of user data input capability in a HID mouse device, the present invention uses a novel mouse key event-scroll motion signal combined coding scheme to make available up to at least hundreds of different command signals without the need of invoking any keyboard commands.
The present invention may further comprise a display panel to display the current status of the device and other important information. Alternatively, status and indicator lights may be used or added to replace or complement the display panel. When a touch sensitive display panel is used in the present invention, that touch panel may be used for command/data generating purposes as well.
In some applications, such as: quiz-taking in a computer based interactive classroom teaching session or board of director voting session, assuring the user identity of each device is crucial. The present invention may use an identity identification mechanism, such as: a finger print scanner or a button/encoder-generated passcode lock, for example, to identify the device user before allowing critical action taking place. Additionally, the device in the present invention may further comprise a memory means to bookkeep all the commands that have been sent by the device user for reference, backup and diagnosis purposes, for example.
On the receiver side, not shown in the drawing, in one embodiment of the present invention the received signal is processed by an application-specific event handler to translate the input signal into the corresponding input date form before applying to the application. That is, if the received signal is not received with a Left Mouse Key #5 activated, it will be handled as a regular mouse action. Otherwise, the received signal will be translated by TABLE 1 to extract the user input value and then processed.
While the invention has been described, for illustrative purposes and in connection with what may be considered most practical and preferred embodiment at the present time, it is to be understood that the present invention is not to be limited to the disclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
