Mechanical Keyboards

I love it. It's elegantly simple piece of electronics, while also being an amazing audiovisual spectacle. For the whole office.

More here. Bonus points to the first person to spot the keycaps I had to switch after taking the pic.

• Leftover no-stabilizers PCB from old project
• Pi Pico running ZMK
• Outemu half-height blue (odd but kinda nice "ball catch" click mechanism)
• VSA keycaps (except for the 1.75u SP DSA on Enter... thank you, otherwise ill-advised purchase of a keycap Grab Bag)
• DIY laser cut plate
• DIY 3D printed case
• As always with my builds, a minimum of 17% jank is included for free.

More here.

Corsair recently shut down Drop, their Keyboard/Audio/EDC brand that used to be Massdrop. In the fire sale, you could get a solid aluminum TKL (the "CTRL") case for ten bucks. I have done quite a few handwired keyboards in the past few years, usually custom layouts (or else why bother?), but this seemed like an interesting challenge. The integrated switchplate was not milled to very tight tolerances, so I had to find the manufacturing files for an open source aftermarket PCB and turn one of them into a DXF file for my laser, so I could use it as a dummy PCB to hold the switches still. I also had to 3D print a spacer to go between the case's two halves, because the spacer/LED diffuser that originally went with that board was a separate part and I didn't realize I'd need one until the site was shut down. I used an open source tool to generate a build of the open source "ZMK" firmware, and after some tedious troubleshooting and some structural hot-glue, everything works and from the outside it looks pretty normal. Caps are MOA profile from Amazon resale, and switches are generic reds (light linear), lubed and spring swapped so they're heavy linears.

J42Kbm with TTC Venus and KAT Space Dust Asymplex Artisan HuB Spacebars

OC by @Metafalls_@beehaw.org

OC by @catlover@sh.itjust.works

Hi everyone! I'd like to share the successor of my old keyboards.

My mechanical keyboard journey began by getting a CMStrom Quickfire TK for one of my birthdays. It has brown switches, which I liked very much. However I didn't really try any other switches, I simply decided by online sources, that how a brown switch should feel, and I thought I need that force feedback when pressing a key. It turned out great, I loved it. I'm not even sure how many years I used it for, but its very possible that its close to 10 years. I had absolutely no issues with it, but since the hungarian key layout it an ISO layout I had some issues with the ANSI layout.

After a while I decided its time for an upgrade, and one of my friends suggested Keychron. I decided on the Keychron K2, which was a really good upgrade in my experience. I immediately knew that the 75% layout was for me. Again brown keys, now ISO layout with a pleasant surprise that Keychron manufactured HU keycaps. This keyboard wasn't used for that many years, only like 2-3. At one point the 'q' key broke, and started chattering, I guess that because it was a key I used a lot, and the K2 not being a very high end keyboard. Still was strange, because my CMStorm lasted 10 years, and still works perfectly. The K2 has hot swappable switches, I solved this by changing it to something that I rarely use.

While looking for replacement switches, I encountered a keyboard on the Keychron site, that caught my attention multiple times in the past, but I didn't want to buy a new keyboard till the old one was working. However the old one had this issue I mentioned, so I could technically consider it "broken", and also my birthday was coming, so I decided to order a Q1 Max.

Of course I ordered it with brown keys again, since I wasn't sure how I could try new ones for free. I'm not a keyboard tinkerer, I ordered the Q1 Max pre-built. When it arrived I immediately felt that it was a huge upgrade compared to the K2. The keys feel nice, the keycaps are awesome. Not that the keycaps mattered, because I replaced them with a custom printed one from yuzukeycaps. The checkerboard patter is something I found on team liquid forums related to Star Craft topics many years ago, and I liked how unique and cool they looked. If you search for "tl forum checkerboard keyboard" you can find images of them:

However after a few days of using it I realized something was wrong, and noticed that many keys type double. This made me very concerned, and after checking online about this issue I found a ton of reddit threads about this exact same issue, and that Keychron keyboards became unreliable over time. At this point I deeply regret ordering a Keychron, and trusting on the brand after my K2 experience. Every time I tried searching for solution I found even more user experiences with faulty keyboards that broke in the first weeks of using them.

I contacted support. Of course the days that I can get a refund has passed. They said to upgrade the firmware of my keyboard, which I did from 1.0 to 1.1, which introduced debounce timers. Fortunately 30ms debounce seems to have fixed this issue, but I'm still deeply concerned that something will break in the near future, especially after reading feedback of Keychron keyboards on reddit. When I decided on this high-end keyboard I was planning that I will use this till it truly breaks, and will last way more times than my old CMStorm. The Q1 Max still has to earn my trust, and I still need to give it a soul by using it for years. Has a lot to prove till I respect it like my CMStorm.

If you got this far, I'm curious about your experience about Keychron keyboards, especially if you have a Q1 Max. Or anything related to the post. I feel like this debounce is there to hide some manufacturing issues, despite reading something about this that its not a quality issue, but a switch characteristics.

Have a nice day!

More pics: https://imgur.com/a/epomaker-tide65-mods-cGhisks

I got this all-aluminum board very cheap, like under thirty bucks. It had some issues, but I've fixed most of them. Foremost was that Epomaker was hiding keys from me, and THAT WILL NOT STAND, lol. The PCB supports split-space, but the plate doesn't. My laser helped me fix that. It also had a garbage knob that doesn't go above the keys and had no knurling or texture to use it from the side. Fixed that. I also rarely use boards wireless, and then only because something temporary has made it convenient, so out with the battery and in with some steel wheel weights to replace the mass of the battery and then some. It also came with "Yet Another Light Linear" and for someone who types how I do, a light linear is more of a proximity detector than a keyboard switch, so I traded out the 40g-ish springs for 80g ones, making it equivalent to the heavier side of various companies' black switches. Finally, I traded out the gamer-font front-shine caps for some simple white-on-black. All in all, I am liking this board now, where immediately upon purchase I wondered if I should send it back despite the price.

publicação cruzada de: https://lemmy.world/post/33514874

Hi there fellow people,

I was building an Aurora Sofle_v2 and I may have screwed things up. I melted one of the RGBs with the soldering iron and in the process of trying to remove it the solder pad was removed as well

After that I tried to "fix" it a handful of times, and now I believe that the connectors might be gone =(

Is there a way for me to salvage this RGB? (Or perhaps to link the previous one with the following one on the chain, so at least it works for the others)

I was thinking of connecting things using cables, is this an option?

Update: Bodge wiring worked! I got some spare cable pieces I had laying around and soldered it to the board The back doesn't look pretty, but at least it's lighting up (except the last RGB where I accidentally soldered two pins together, after this I'm not going through the troubles to fix it)

Hey! I'm pretty new to this mech keyboard thing but I'm hooked. A couple months ago I got an Aula f75 and I love it. It sounds sooo nice and buttery... And the linear switches feel awesome to me.

I started looking at cute little 40% boards and thought I'd really like something ortholinear, minimal, where I'd have to use layers and home row mods etc. I got the $40 mk47 from Micro Center (sort of a Planck knockoff), put on some blank caps, learned enough QMK to set up my layers and tapdance and all that, and even switched from QWERTY to colemak-dh. This scratches a number of my neurodivergent itches! And I'm up to 35wpm after a few days. :P ...

Except for two things. It doesn't sound nearly as good as the Aula, and my wrists are starting to hurt. (My daily driver was a split membrane kb for years until this.)

I've been looking at the zsa voyager, and it looks like it could be "the one"-- it's portable (important), well built (can throw in backpack to take to office), etc. But will it satisfy the need for that sound?? So far looking around on YouTube it kinda doesn't seem like it,but it could just be that Voyager reviewers don't focus on such silly things as thocky vs creamy, lol. But this is important! Anyone feel me?

So I've also been looking at Cornes, and whatever other minimalist split kbs out there. I don't want to solder anything myself, which removes some options..

Any recommendations out there? Either for other boards, or "yes the voyager can thock"? Thanks in advance!!

These are for an upcoming keyboard meetup in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I'm annoyed that some of the tacos didn't infuse properly, but most of them came out okay.

I've been using my first ever mechanical keyboard (Cougar Vantar MX) for like 3 years but recently a few keys broke and it doesn't have hot swap so yea I need a new one. The budget is up to $100 but closer to 50 would be preferred.

Requirements:

• Has to be mechanical lol.

• Has to be 100% with numpad due to simulation software I use. Without a numpad the software is truly hard to use.

• Has to be wired as I do play multiplayer games. Dual connectivity is fine only if latency is not impacted at all.

• Has to be black because my whole setup is black. Grey accents could be fine though.

• Has to be normal size. Now this one is important. My desk is tiny and the mouse is under the keyboard so every millimeter of vertical space matters. Obviously arm rest is a no go. No super low profile either though. I do need key travel.

• Has to have linear switches. I'm not picky about that but just don't make it 200g or 0.5mm of sensor distance. Something Cherry MX Red esque would be perfect.

Preferences:

• Separate volume control and mute keys/lever. I'm no fan of FN+F3.

• Proper RGB with on board memory.

• Decent reliability lol.

Not important:

• PBN/ABS keycaps.

• macros and other advanced features.

• basically anything very advanced.

I'm pretty sure that something like this doesn't exist off the shelf, but I'll ask to be sure. Is there an off the shelf, Alice-like, ergonomic or split mechanical keyboard that retains all of the keys of an TKL/80% in their proper relative positions?

I need a full set of full-size F keys, traditionaly arranged arrows/Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn, both Ctrls, both Alts. Numpad either gone or attached to the left. Just the main block has to be angled like an Alice keyboard. The closest thing I've found is something referred to as "Sanwa Alice" on Aliexpress, but it does unfortunately have the Numpad.

Is there anything that matches my description or do I have to go the full custom design route?