The Sensel Morph Is A Keyboard On Steroids

In the world of technology, change happens with the blink of an eye. But one thing that has remained relatively constant throughout the years is the good old mouse and keyboard.

The Sensel Morph, freshly unveiled on Kickstarter today, is looking to change that.

The Sensel Morph is a touch-input device that is meant to change the way we interact with the digital world. It looks like a regular trackpad, but inside it’s packed with 20,000 sensor elements that can detect even the slightest touch and measure the force of that touch.

Because it’s not a capacitive touch device, like the display of your smartphone, it doesn’t require human touch to be used. In other words, an artist can take a paintbrush or a pencil to the Morph and the digital end-product will still have all the nuances that come with the use of these tools.

The Morph is starting out with three overlays that hook in via magnets: a keyboard, an MPC-style MIDI controller, and a piano/drum pad. Through Bluetooth, users can pair the Morph with a computer, tablet or smartphone.

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But the folks at Sensel don’t want to limit the ways that users can interact with the Morph, and are thus allowing users to create their own custom Morph interfaces through a drag-and-drop process. As more interfaces are created for the device, users will be able to share them with other owners to order.

And on the developer side, coders will have access to Sensel’s API, which will allow them to integrate Morph technology into their applications to offer new pressure-based interactions to their users.

The Morph is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now with an early-bird price of $199, which bumps up to $249 as soon as early-bird runs out.