Optimus LED Keyboard Shipping

Chicago (IL) - Art Lebedev today announced that it has begun shipping Optimus Maximus keyboards.

According to an announcement made on the Optimus project blog, keyboards are now shipping to customers who pre-ordered the $1564 keyboard nine months ago. Keyboards with passive keys are delayed and will be shipping in about a month, the manufacturer said.

The Optimus Maximus integrates a standalone LED in each of its 113 keys. Each LED has a size of 10.1 x 10.1 mm and offers a resolution of 48 x 48 pixels. According to Art Lebedev, the keys can not only display images, but videos with frame rates of up to 10 fps as well. Up to 65,536 colors are supported, which can be seen on viewing angles of up to 160 degrees. Image and video layouts are stored on a SD flash memory card, which can be inserted on the back of the keyboard.

Earlier this month, one of the first Optimus Maximus keyboards was sold for $2750 on Ebay.