Art Lebedev explains Upravlator to five year olds, no one else

Art Lebedev is in full-on tease mode for their upcoming Upravlator, which they will be announcing next week. Their blog is replete with cute little teasers posts, which include that "Explaining Upravlator To A Five Year Old" diagram up above. The input device, which will take over a whole monitor port, will feature "ultra-large" keys, which are pictured after the break, along with the rest of Art's smarmy hints. The Upravlator will require a USB and power plug, along with that precious VGA port, and will work with an optional folding stand. Other than that, we're still in the dark as to how this thing will be a help to video editors and graphic designers, but hopefully a few of our five-year-old readers out there can enlighten us in the comments.

[Via DV Guru]

Update: an anonymous source has let us know the Upravlator is a 12 button device indended to be the successor to the Optimus [mini] three, with customizeable buttons that react to one another. We're still a little unclear, but our tipster mentioned clicking on a corner button and the others will change in context. We're sure it's going to be cool and all, but we're just not able to get the buzz machine started on this one.

[Alex V. @ Oct 18th 2006 2:08PM]

I'm not a 5 year old nor do I play one on TV but I'd have to guess that this is something in the vein of a touch sensitive tablet placed over an LCD monitor of sorts which can also superimpose special configurable "buttons".

Thus, designers could "draw on the screen" and switch functions, applications, etc without the need to move to a keyboard. In the same way, it can probably superimpose a touch-screen keyboard.

Doesn't seem that "out there" since I'm guessing there are quite a few similar products on the market. But then again, its just a guess.

[Neil @ Oct 18th 2006 2:10PM]

I'm guessing it has 9 or 12 buttons what are LCD screens driven by one video output and hardware in the device will split the image to each button. What it does after that is anyones guess :)

[csnoke @ Oct 18th 2006 2:15PM]

Wow, you can tell by the smarmy little pirate photo of himself he really thinks he's on to something with this. Programmable rocker buttons, with tiny little displays under them. Rad.

[Grizz @ Oct 18th 2006 2:18PM]

Heck, thats easy, its a Mini-NINE. Arts buying time untill the full keyboard can be manafactured.

[peej @ Oct 18th 2006 2:42PM]

man, does the thing use enough ports? You know I've got a free firewire port and a couple of audio inputs left, maybe you could throw in some extra cables to fill them up too!

I hope this thing doesn't turn in to the gadget equivalent a segway with all hype and no awesomeness.

[Peter Elliot @ Oct 18th 2006 2:44PM]

This is probably a single small LCD panel driven from the 2nd VGA port.

On top of this is a frame of buttons which may 2/4-way rocking on the PCB frame with a window cut out to allow the LCD below to show through.

The VGA would simply output the contents in a matrix which matched the button layout.

[Andrew W. @ Oct 18th 2006 3:02PM]

OMG, people still use VGA ports?

[DIGItonium @ Oct 18th 2006 3:12PM]

When the developer mentioned Photoshop, I quickly guessed what the device was for.

I think it's a tool palette that can be accessed by pressing the LCD/OLED embedded keys like the Mini Three. It sounds like a pretty cool idea with tool icons on the keys changing depending on what category or function you select.

That's my hunch!

[teodoro @ Oct 18th 2006 3:14PM]

Probably by the time this is actually released, the 5-year-olds will be 6 and then what's he going to do? He should market this to 4 year olds now.

[Harvey @ Oct 18th 2006 3:24PM]

I don't know what it does, but I know Apple and Sony are already jointly working on their own version: "The De-prave-a-la-tor!" It will run off expensive exploding batteries, scratch easily, and cost twice as much.

[james @ Oct 18th 2006 3:29PM]

honestly, i do not understand the hype behind this. extra keys. wow. oh, they have pictures, great. how exciting. or i could just use the keyboard i have and not have to worry about looking away from my screen. maybe i am too old to see the actual use of this.

[iptydafu @ Oct 18th 2006 3:29PM]

Application -> File -> Handling

[N.R. @ Oct 18th 2006 3:34PM]

I can enlighten on one thing - UPRAVLATOR means CONTROLLER in russian.

[allyric @ Dec 1st 2007 2:37AM]

It doesn't.

The verb "upravlyat'" really means "to control", "to drive", "to handle". But there's no word "Upravlator" in Russian (e.x. in Russian controller is called the same, "controller").

That's kinda word game.

[Arthur @ Oct 18th 2006 3:51PM]

Sounds like something that came from the Kitchen Appliance Naming Institute.

(For those Mitch Hedberg fans out there.)

[gabezor @ Oct 18th 2006 5:02PM]

"I'm goin on break!"

[disciple83 @ Oct 18th 2006 4:21PM]

I'll take this little fresher here and go on break...

[Edward K. @ Oct 19th 2006 12:49AM]

YES! Mitch Hedberg!

[andy @ Oct 18th 2006 6:16PM]

I surmise that this device has 9 removeable screens that show pieces of video, which can then be rearranged on the board to easily piece together a video sequence.

[sparx104 @ Oct 18th 2006 6:36PM]

I would assume it's like the screens they use in the Matrix - it's just a large touch screen where the actual "buttons" change depending on the task.

[Kain Azeroth @ Oct 18th 2006 7:17PM]

... VGA? I don't even have a VGA port... HAHAHAHAHAHA

[frank @ Oct 18th 2006 7:41PM]

He's no 5 year old, but my 3 year old nephew says it's a picture "of a kitty house, in Manchester, where a doctor lives with the kitties and they play guitar all night".

[The Downer @ Oct 18th 2006 8:01PM]

Your nephew should be a product designer. That sounds awesome. The upravlator probably won't be anywhere near as impressive. From what I can make of it, I'd rather have a Cintiq.

[MuShoo @ Oct 18th 2006 7:59PM]

There's a new picture of the front of the device (sort of) here: http://www.artlebedev.ru/blog/upra4.jpg if that disappears, I can mirror it (promise not to destroy my bandwidth).

It looks to me as though each screen/button will have 5 activators on it - top, left, right, side, and middle. Depending on how responsive the buttons are, we might get diagonals as well. Now, onto the 5-year old picture. That big 'ME" in the top left could easily stand for 'Materials Editor' like in the upra4 image. Working further, there is a thick black border surrounding the ME icon, and the 6 buttons to the right of it. My guess is that by clicking the full ME button, you open up various material editor options in the 6 other buttons. If the Upravlator can be used to navigate menu items _and_ include a visual reference, this could be extremely useful. Being a sound editor, I would adore having one of these at my mixing console, and never have to look at the real monitor again.

As to number of buttons, I'm going with 12.

I shudder to think of the kind of things I could do with one of these and a copy of Max/MSP/Jitter.

[Chris Darfur @ Oct 26th 2006 11:29AM]

LOL on the Manchester kitty cat place. No, really, I think this from the "Alan Parsons Project." (Apologies to Dr. Evil.)

[Sheldon @ Nov 11th 2007 8:14AM]

Actually I think this is a bit more than simply a Mini-NINE.
If you look carefully at the photo of the PCB, there looks like a shadow of another microswitch on the *side* of one of the display gaps. As a cost reduction exercise I wouldn't expect there to be a seperate button on each side (one should be sufficient)...unless each display/button is a four-way direction pad which appears to be hinted at in the 5-year old sketch which has arrows on some of the buttons.