Bill said:
Hi. I need some combination of hardware that lets me keep all
electronics and all metal-containing parts of a computer, its
peripherals and hardware at least 10 meters away from the user, while
giving the user a completely normal interface, that is visually and
tactilely indistinguishable from a normal moniter/keyboard/mouse.
What combination of off-the-shelf peripherals will allow this?
The monitor is easy. Use a projector with a VGA input, to project the
computer output onto a wall. That will give you the image. A nice
glass bead screen, should improve the optical qualities. No, it won't
look like a 17" monitor, but it'll still be able to transmit
intelligence across the room.
The keyboard and mouse are going to be custom solutions.
You make the keyboard purely out of plastic. For each key, you
bring two fiber optic cables. One is a transmitter, the other
a receiver. You arrange the bottom of the key cap, such that
it interrupts the light beam when the key is depressed. The
device at the computer, converts the received optical signal,
back into a switch closure. In this case, the two fiber optic
cables are plastic (so-called dental fiber), and so is the keycap.
The dental fiber might be more expensive than the electronics
to read out each keycap. It's doable, but not cheap.
The mouse is going to be even more of a problem. You might need
to seek the advice of a physicist for that one. Interferometric
techniques can measure distances to good accuracy (count fringes
when the object moves). But i don't know how you'd probe the
mouse with free space optics, to figure out, reliably, where
it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry
Another possibility, is gyroscopes. I don't know enough about
gyros to make a plausible story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_laser_gyroscope
Another potential source of power for your mouse,
is compressed air, as that can be carried to the
mouse without metal tubing. If, say, you wanted to
create a rotating gyroscope, and needed a power source.
The mouse buttons can be read out the same way as the keyboard
keys.
The need for a non-metallic and non-electronic remote set of devices,
makes the problem into a custom one, rather than off the shelf.
An example of where you'd want such a set of technologies, would be
for a setup next to medical imaging equipment, the stuff with the
huge magnetic field involved. You can't have any ferromagnetic
materials near a thing like that, and who knows how regular
electronic devices would behave if that field had any modulation
or not.
I think you need the services of a physicist for the harder stuff.
Physicists can do electronics, as well as physics, so they
"cover two domains for the price of one".
Paul
