Art Lebedev’s Optimux Maximus Programmable OLED Keyboard

I have written about a few really cool devices and gadgets to come out of Art Lebedev’s studio in past months.  My friend Tatiana from the KTH program just recently told me about an Art Lebedev Studio design called Optimus Maximus – a programmable, fully customizable OLED keyboard that gives you the ability to have kazillions of keyboard layouts at the touch of your finger.  Video on a key, images on a key, text on a key – whatever you can dream up.

Want to have a Photoshop shortcuts keyboard?

How about an Asian keyboard?  Cyrillic?  Greek?  Arabic?  How about a magical new language that you invented from pictures of a sumo wrestler from thin to fat to thin, or a series of photographs of various stages of a Cheeto in digestion?

Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard is pretty awesome.  I can imagine what my HogPC keyboard layout would be, and how many different layouts I would have on that thing in the first day – AutoCAD, WYSIWYG, Illustrator, all of the Office products that I use regularly – the ability to switch from one layout to another easily makes my designer mouth water.

The Optimus Maximus keyboard also comes with a manager/creator software that allows you to customize your layout and save them as formatted files – resolution is 48X48 pixels at 10 frames per second (if you’re doing video).  The keyboard itself has an SD slot on the rear for storing layout files, two USB ports, a mount for a K-lock, USB power and DC power inputs:

How much would you think a virtually unlimited collection of keyboard layouts cost?  Well, it’s about 44,000 Rubles, $1692.31 USD, or €1257.14 Euro.  But it is pretty awesome.  Someday I will be able to afford one.