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Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

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Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#241

Post by rxyz »

ebastler wrote: post #197
rxyz wrote: post #100

What a beautiful device. Few questions: Will it be okay for someone who switches between devices and OSes often? Can I have layers that I can swap between like on a VIA board? What is the click latency? Is USB just for charging or can I use it without BT?

The board runs ZMK, which handles layers quite similarly to QMK/VIA. Whether you can bind dedicated layers to output profiles for automated switching in ZMK I do not know, but toggling between layers manually via some shortcut when you switch between devices works for sure. There is a video by one of the ZMK team members where he tested ZMK latency (wired and wireless) against other options on the market - it is, how…

Yeah Logitech MX Keys was the reason I asked. Without their $20 dongle it’s not a full product that can be connected to any pc via usb.

Anyway, Thanks for the answers. Shortcuts would be enough for me. I was eyeing a lofree board but this is more interesting

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#242

Post by richwater »

aemerson_ wrote: post #234
richwater wrote: post #30

These switches remind me of the butterfly switches on previous generations of Macbooks....not a great memory

Yes the butterfly switches were pretty bad. Superficially ours are similar but there are a few key differences: - Ours has an actual mechanical switch (with a spring and contact leaf) that is pressed, the butterfly switches were a metal dome - Our switches have much more vertical travel (1.8mm) compared to the butterfly switches (~0.5mm). A big part of the issues with the butterfly switches was they had tiny toleranc…

Thank you for the response. Good luck on your endeavor!

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#243

Post by ebastler »

litoE wrote: post #200

In the 1980s a company called Quotron developed a contactless keyboard. The main circuit board contained a bunch of LEDs and some sort of photo diodes or photo cells, all arranged in a grid. The keys were simply plungers that when pressed down interrupted the light beams shining into some of the receivers. The firmware then decided which key had been pressed and generated the appropriate code. The keyboard itself was…

Optical keyboards are still around (although rare) and usually use some variation of Cherry MC style switches without contact pins. Newer tech also consists of magnetic designs (hall effect, tunnelmagnetoresistance or inductive). These all allow for analog input (variable user-settable actuation points for example) which makes them popular with the gaming crowd. I'm developing such a PCB for a different project at the moment.

As far as I'm aware none of these are waterproof, however, as they all have exposed PCBs inside the case. I guess one could just conformally coat the circuit board, but I haven't seen that done yet for a commercial keyboard.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#244

Post by aemerson_ »

tomburgs wrote: post #227

It appears that the audio section where you can preview the different sounds (power on, charging, low battery) are not working for me. It throws a `Uncaught (in promise) NotSupportedError: The element has no supported sources.` on `audio.play();` at the very end of main.js.

Thank you for flagging this, it is now fixed.

It was an issue with Firefox and the codec we use for the audio samples. I just changed the codec for the audio to something that works on all browsers.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#245

Post by dghlsakjg »

throw10920 wrote: post #224
ary wrote: post #49

To everyone who is about to pile on regarding the lack of a fingerprint sensor: you know it's not possible, we all know it's not possible, the creator of this project knows it's not possible. What are you adding to the conversation when you complain about it? So it's a dealbreaker for you, don't buy it. To @aemerson_: Congratulations on taking a risk. On first look this is great work. The attention to detail on both…

> To everyone who is about to pile on regarding the lack of a fingerprint sensor This is a cheap way to try to subvert legitimate criticism by trying to shame others into not voicing their criticisms, and is exactly the opposite of what HN is intended for.

I think the point is that it isn’t really a legitimate criticism of the device. Not having a fingerprint sensor was not a design choice by the keyboard maker. It is a constraint of the operating system that peripheral makers have no ability to work around.

Why bother discussing impossibilities? Might as well criticize it for not being powered by a miniature fusion reactor since that has about the same chances of happening in the short term as a third party Apple compatible fingerprint sensor.

If you want to pile onto Apple instead of the hardware maker, that is valid criticism.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#246

Post by throw10920 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #245
throw10920 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To everyone who is about to pile on regarding the lack of a fingerprint sensor This is a cheap way to try to subvert legitimate criticism by trying to shame others into not voicing their criticisms, and is exactly the opposite of what HN is intended for.

I think the point is that it isn’t really a legitimate criticism of the device. Not having a fingerprint sensor was not a design choice by the keyboard maker. It is a constraint of the operating system that peripheral makers have no ability to work around. Why bother discussing impossibilities? Might as well criticize it for not being powered by a miniature fusion reactor since that has about the same chances of happ…

> I think the point is that it isn’t really a legitimate criticism of the device

Tacking on emotional manipulation does not somehow make your point (more) valid.

> Not having a fingerprint sensor was not a design choice by the keyboard maker. It is a constraint of the operating system that peripheral makers have no ability to work around.

What? Numerous other sibling posts have pointed out that this is not only possible, but it's already been done. Claiming it's "a constraint of the operating system" is false.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49199063

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