87 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "Keyboard Fun"
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date: 2021-12-12T14:10:00+03:00
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draft: false
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categories: [keyboard]
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tags: [keyboard]
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url: /posts/keyboard-fun/
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author: "Christoph Cullmann"
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resources:
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- name: "featured-image-preview"
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src: "images/xtrfy-varmilo-moonlight.jpg"
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---
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## Keyboards?
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In the recent past, I started to get more interested in the qualify of the keyboards I use at work and home.
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I always hated to use very cheap low-profile boards, but otherwise I more or less always worked with what came stock with my PC in the good old times ;)
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## TKL boards
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A longer time ago I bought some Xtrfy K4 TKL White Edition keyboard, my first keyboard that had no numbers block.
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I liked it a lot and the red switches were ok for my taste.
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Thought I didn't like the keycaps, they feel cheap.
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Some weeks ago, I bought the Varmilo Moonlight VA88M, a TKL keyboard with nicer keycaps (both in material and design).
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I now used it at home for some weeks and the brown switches are fine, keycaps are fantastic, Cherry profile PBT keycaps are really nifty.
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But....
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The ping...
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Especially in the middle of the keyboard, each and every key pings.
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Actually you can get the ping even if you just tap a bit on the backside of the board itself, seems to be no sole switch issue :/
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## Removing the ping?
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All reviews I read didn't tell a thing about any ugly ping with the stock Varmilo board.
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Thought most reviews naturally did look at the ANSI variant, but I bought the ISO one, given I like the German layout.
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Perhaps they just altered something in the more recent fabrication, who knows.
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I did take some look at the internals of the keyboard to see if some more dampening or taping could help.
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See the disassembly and later playing around with stuff and tape below.
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/varmilo-moonlight-disass-1.jpg"></center>
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/varmilo-moonlight-disass-2.jpg"></center>
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/varmilo-moonlight-disass-3.jpg"></center>
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/varmilo-moonlight-disass-4.jpg"></center>
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Short answer: it didn't help. You can even stuff the lower parts totally with "anything", given you screw all things together later it will still ping.
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Even alone the upper plate does ping if you tick it without any extra parts.
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I found no way to stabilize it in a way that removes that.
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Btw., hint for anyone trying this: Yes, there is some stupid screw below some white seal at the bottom ;)
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Unlike the one screw that is missing on the top, there is one...
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For flexing the case open, even if you are too dumb to remove all screws, my nice old BahnCard and credit cards did help a lot ;=)
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## The solution?
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Now, given I just use one PC, I had one keyboard that has no ugly sounds and is ok, and one keyboard that has really fantastic keycaps and is borked.
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Solution? Create one out of both.
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Given the red switches and the typing on the Xtrfy board was nice, why not just use the Varmilo keycaps for it?
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/xtrfy-varmilo-moonlight-transfer-1.jpg"></center>
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/xtrfy-varmilo-moonlight-transfer-2.jpg"></center>
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/xtrfy-varmilo-moonlight-transfer-3.jpg"></center>
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Varmilo was nice enough to include a keycaps puller anyways, already used for the total disassembly above.
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## End result
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<center><img width=700 src="/posts/keyboard-fun/images/xtrfy-varmilo-moonlight.jpg"></center>
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I think the final "product" looks nice.
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The RGB back-lighting still works, thought the new keycaps are not shine-through.
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In addition I have now a full shine-through ABS keycaps set as backup parts for more keyboard modding.
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And some more or less useless Varmilo baseboard.
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But who knows, if I spill too much coffee or whatever in my board, I can still re-build the Varmilo board to have something that works (and pings).
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Naturally that was not the way I meant to use the new keyboard, but good enough ;)
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And I must confess, a bit modding around on the keyboards was fun!
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For any people interested in keyboards: I think both boards mentioned above are ok.
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Perhaps I just was unlucky with my Varmilo board and other builds of it don't ping at all, like the most reviews tell.
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