Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

A bit ago I accidentally bought a Keychron keyboard that didn't have QMK support, but then found that someone had ported it anyway, and I was able to flash it and fix some problems I had (the main one being that it seems like the default firmware only scans a single row of keys while asleep, possibly to save energy, but I want any keypress to wake the computer.) Maybe it's not perfect, but the community around open source keyboard firmware is great, it's a good example of how open source is beneficial for end users, especially power users.

And, in an era where vendor software and firmware for all kinds of devices is constantly having vulnerabilities, it is possible the liability of doing custom shit will eventually outweigh whatever benefits hardware companies seem to think it has, versus just having industry standards and free software instead. But, maybe that is wishful thinking.

My only complaint with Keychron is that of 5 or so keyboards I've owned from them I wound up having to resolder 3 different hotswap sockets on 2 different keyboards right out of the box. That is... Not a fantastic failure rate. OTOH, they are otherwise an unambiguously great value, with materials and build quality that feels pretty impressive for the cost, QC issues notwithstanding.

I think that Keychron is a meme brand surfing on the long tail of custom drops. I have a couple of them a Q1 Pro something, a K* whatever. They are just decent keyboards, a middle of the road. The constant accidental invocation of flashing lights is annoying and then you have to cycle through the presets. Not unique enough for geeks. Their marketing is good.

My Moonlander is gathering dust, can't find time to put it up on Ebay. Bought it 3 years ago, used for a week. QWERTY is hard to quit. I like the EPOMAKER Magicforce Smart2 68-Key layout [0] . No QMK, but I get by with Karabiner, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0836T2Y17

You sound like me. Same gripe about my Keychron, same Moonlander gathering dust that I keep meaning to do something with...

I mentioned it to the person you’re replying to but if you’re in the USA and considering. in offloading the Moonlander I’m interested. My email is available in my profile.

Agree, not much special about them, and I truly hate their keycap profile which I find to be way too tall. They’re not bad keyboards, and regularly on sales in the 40-60% range for many of their boards, it’s just that they’re not great either, middle of the road so to say.

> I like the EPOMAKER Magicforce Smart2 68-Key layout [0] . No QMK, but I get by with Karabiner, etc.

Many Epomaker boards are just licensed to be sold under their brand name, most of them fairly transparently. (Ie. Epomaker x Aula, Leobog etc.)

Quite a few of their configuration software packages end up looking quite horrible as a result, as I don't believe they have a unified software package for all the brands they sell. Many Windows Forms looking programs that look like a time machine back to the era of Windows XP.

Unfortunately they've also been caught up in quite a few scandals over the years: QMK license violations Customer support/Quality control issues Attempts to dodge customs by deliberately under-declaring the value of their packages... Got into a legal fight when another company also licensed an identical board design and beat them to market (The other company aren't angels either) Platform banned from Reddit for astroturfing

Which kind of just results in Epomaker in being a hard discourage.

At the time I purchased the one I linked to, it was sold under Qisan brand. I don't have any brand loyalty to either them or the Epomacher, I just prefer this specific "MagicForce 68 Smart" build - the layout, the quality, that it's only white backlit. It is really made well. If you can live without the F row, it's a great keyboard.

Their low profile keyboards are some of the best available. "Standard" full size mechanical keyboards is a a pretty crowded market with literally thousands of products that aren't that differentiated.

Agreed. I bought my low profile keychron k3 pro, I believe it was, several years ago and I'm really happy with it. No complaint whatsoever. I bought the equivalent with full layout for my wife a couple of years ago and she's really happy with it too.

I don't think I can move away from low profile mechanical keyboards with programmable firmware like QMK now. I'm too used to my Keychron

You can disable the invocation of the lights.

Fn + L + Light button for 6 seconds for the K series.

YMMV depending on the exact model.

https://keychronsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052...

Their low profile keyboards are unmatched IMHO. Nothing has hit the balance that they have.

approaches manaskarekar with slow deliberate steps

stands before manaskarekar

clasps manaskarekar upon both shoulders

gazes into manaskarekar

softly smiles and subtly nods at manaskarekar

releases clasp and worm-dances back into the desert

You need a cape! And my bad for not RTFMing or searching their site. All three of my K series now blissfully dark. Thank you kind person.

Also their he magnetic sensor keyboards are awesome especially for the price

> QWERTY is hard to quit

Is your moonlander not QWERTY? Can’t you just change the layout, if not? Or do you mean the Ortholinear layout is hard to get used to?

I’ve been wanting to buy a moonlander…

I think he meant that the left side has QWERT and the right one has the Y

It's both the ortho and the split. The Moonlander is a very nice keyboard, it's worth its BOM, I was simply impatient. I bought it for the cool factor on a whim without realizing time investment required. My email is in my profile, I'm in the states.

Mine is plugged in but not that used yet. Same deal its hard to change habits. I also find it slightly too big for my hands especially with the mouseball added. Its sad because it feels so qualoty and the ideas are awsome just my habits are slowing my adoption

Hmu (email in profile) if you’re in the US and want to get rid of the moon lander; I really enjoy my Voyager want to try out the Moonlander.

That EPOMAKER reminds me of my Leopold Topre keyboard.

Avoid EPOMAKER, they are super buggy in my experience (losing connection, requiring weekly reflashing of firmware).

Mine hates the P button. Sometimes it will not react to it. Sometimes It wil repppeat it two or three times. But I love the aesthetic of the pastel colors, the volume sphere is cool and the typing feeling is great. I dropped my keychron k2 and it stopped working via usb, but charging still works. If I were able to fix it maybe (maybe) I'd switch back to it, in the end I prefer having a reliable keyboard.

I also realised that qwerty will always be required. So I use colemak-dhm on split-columnar-blank-keycap keyboards with less keys and qwerty on unibody-rowstaggered-printed-keycap full-size keyboards. It helps my brain to switch.

It is very similar to using both bikes, ebikes and motorcycles all having different controls. Your brain can have different muscle memory if it thinks of them as different things.

Keycron are middle of the road decent keyboards, but they are priced much lower then other comparable ones. This makes them much more then a meme brand.

Perhaps "meme" was a wrong choice of words. What I wanted to say, I think, is that they are overrepresented in review coverage than they deserve. Good for them, they are decent keyboards, I didn't say they weren't.

This is why i buy them. With the latest keyboards putting the usbc port on the left side *n a protected sunken enclosure they got good enough to use at wotk and i now have 70 or so of them deployed there to nearly uniformly rave reviews

I had keyboards upwards of $200 with a very nice design but they have their Bluetooth switch underneath the keycaps ... and usually don't ship ISO versions. What keychron is delivering for the price is just amazing.

They have silent keyboards in full size and TKL, with Hu layout. It is really silent, with butterfly mechanics, and was ~50€ with VAT included!

Had a slight bug that the kbd didn't wake until first mouse click, when machine woke from sleep, but a recent receiver firmware update solved it. It is great value for the buck. It is very hard to find really silent keyboards, especially in ISO layouts, and there they have it. Is it customizable? Only in software. Does it have trendy clicky keys or fancy keycaps? No. Is it good for my work, when I sometimes have to work late and not disturb my family? It is great!

ps: I'm not at home, I cannot recall the model, I don't really care for this stuff, this is exactly what I wanted: an unnoticable workhorse with good price-performce .

Theres nothing about the moonlander that forces you to not be QWERTY though, and I'd bet most people are in fact on QWERTY with it.

Do you mean hard to quit staggered keyboards? As in the rows dont line up in a grid.

Personally I've been using ortholinear boards for over a decade to the point that its quite the opposite problem, it feels so unnatural to have to move your fingers in such directions. Sometimes there is just no home row quite like a 48 key planck's.

Do you mean hard to quit staggered keyboards? As in the rows dont line up in a grid.

Perhaps. But also, during my 3-4 day infatuation phase, I spent too much time screwing around with remapping and thumb keys and layers with zero to show for it. I do not blame ortho/Moonlander/staggered, this was on me. I am a victim of having too many choices.

My only complaint is that the backlight behavior has like a dozen different settings, none of which are "off". There's "on", "flicker", "blink when you hit the key", "ripple out when you hit the key", "move in waves regardless of input", etc., but there's no "don't be light" option.

It's fn+light-key on my keychron. Might work on yours.

On mine, it's both!

This works, thanks!

Fn+Tab is the backlight toggle on my V5 Max (and it's specifically called out in the user manual https://www.keychron.com/pages/keychron-v5-max-user-manual)

I got a c3 pro a few weeks ago and you definitely can turn the lighting off. Don't remember whether it was through cycling or some other combo but you can. Did you look at the manual?

I bought a K4 Nordic version, only to learn none of their software supports it. So i can't reconfigure the firmware.

The keyboard has swapped Super/Alt (Windows/Alt) on the windows layout which is so annoying. I hate spending money on hardware so i'm living with it, but i curse the engineer that burned the prom every day.

That sucks, the main reason I like KeyChron is the little switch on the side of mine that toggles between Mac and Windows! I wouldn't buy another keyboard without this feature TBH.

Yeah on the mac it works fine. The keyboard just shipped with the Left Alt and Left Windows key in the correct positions, but they are mapped opposite in the firmware. Imagine how maddening it was in the beginning.

Are you sure you don't have a tiny switch on the side? The manual indicates it should have one -

https://www.keychron.com/pages/k4-user-manual

I do, but when on the windows mode the keys mentioned are in the wrong positions.

--

Edit and if i switch to the macOS mode. The right alt-gr key is not mapped correctly.

On macOS:

I use my Keychron C3 in Windows mode because the macOS mode ain't right with the bottom left corner keys.

Maybe placement of Control/Option/Command aren't similar enough to the MacBook Pro keyboard for me.

Been meaning to figure this out and fix it... swapping physical keycaps or remapping in software or replacing the keyboard...

Waiting for it to die and will not buy another of theirs. Piece of shit.

Aw I like mine! Besides those few keys of layout.

Hope your next buy's perfect.

I don't think I've ever had a keyboard die on me

If you're not aware, you can remap modifier keys in System Settings on macOS. It doesn't have individual settings for left/right versions of a modifier key, so keep it in whichever mode has the modifiers on left/right paired with each other correctly, and then swap their functions to the right ones.

https://i.imgur.com/FXkmZRV.png

Settings are per keyboard so fixing your external keyboard won't mix up any other keyboards you use (particularly for laptops).

GP’s point is that many keyboards these days come with a Mac/Windows switch, and one of the things that switch does is swap the keycodes sent by the Alt and Win keys—the “Mac” behaviour is exactly what you’re describing. (The other thing it does is toggle FnLock for the F-keys.) So if I had a problem like yours with my keyboard I’d think that the Mac/Win switch were in the wrong position. If I’m reading page 9 of the manual[1] right, on the K4 the switch in question is right next to the USB-C port.

[1] https://www.keychron.com/pages/k4-keyboard-user-manual

Just remap it! If you're on Windows, SharpKeys will do that for you. https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys

I have autohotkey for remapping. The issue is when i boot into a rpi with a new build, i don't want to pollute it with custom xbind mappings.

usbhidproxy would seem to fit the bill, then https://github.com/moonsightz/usbhidproxy

> "the little switch on the side of mine that toggles between Mac and Windows"

The physical slide switch on the Keychrons is a net negative for power users who use a KVM between Windows/Mac/Linux because it would wear out quickly and isn't replaceable. It's more sensible to have switching between layouts by keypress combination.

Have been using one of their keyboards for two years switching between windows and macos and that key was not the one that wore out first. Plus on most keyboards you could configure the layout switch with qmk anyways.

At least on the keychrons i've got, you can absolutely configure layout changes via key combination, and that slide switch is just an input like every button is an input.

I've got 2 that both run QMK firmware, so maybe the non-QMK ones can't do that, but at least some can.

I had a similar issue with mine. But was able to reset it with Fn + z + j for a couple of seconds.

Well, seems to be popular on these kinda keyboards. At least my NuPhy has it.

Why not reconfiguring it with something like AutoHotkey at the OS level ?

> I hate spending money on hardware so i'm living with it

This is an odd take to me, as personally I'd be more willing to spend money on well designed and made hardware, than most software.

I like their products, but I recently discovered that two separate keyboards that I bought a couple of years ago are not actually hot swap despite claiming to be.

On the bright side, both demonstrated very strong solder joints when pulled on fairly aggressively.

It’s interesting and slightly off-topic, but I’ve been a Keychron user for years (currently have their latest Q6 Ultra 8K), and I’m wondering whether I should be using QMK? I’ve never really dug into it before, but I’m afraid I’ll be losing functionality.

I only bought one keyboard from keychron and it was flaky from day one. It's the simplest keyboard they sold - wired, non hot swap. I don't know how to diagnose and fix the problem or I might try. In the end it wasn't worth $50, and you can get other Chinese mechanical keyboards for half the price with seemingly better quality control. Really can't recommend keychron

my issue with the one i have (k2, iirc) is that if i use it wirelessly and the battery dies, it becomes a brick until its been fully recharged. it won't even work as a wired keyboard until then. so ever since then i only use it wired.

Weird, my K1SE or K8Pros aren't like that.

Here's one reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Keychron/comments/j28yzg/k2_v2_does...

seems like there's a workaround but obviously far from ideal.

edit:

actually this may be the one I remember seeing at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Keychron/s/Dewr2dbVNX

This workaround?

"For anyone finding this thread like I just did, all it took for me was plugging the keyboard into a usb 3.0 slot"

supposedly but i don't believe that worked for me at the time (I was connecting it to an m1 Mac Mini, which I believe has usb4 ports).

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