infinitevalence

The only real complaint I have had for my Keychron K4 has been the plastic case, so yesterday I decided NO MORE!

I took some aluminim stock plate I had left over from another unrelated project and trimmed it down, tapped and countersunk mounting holes, and give it a hand brushed look with some 80 grit sand paper.

So far it feels solid, and I love the diffuse reflections from the key illumination. Combining the open sandwich plate with low profile caps gives it a really cool "exploded" or raw look.

I also added some silicone rubber to some of the larger keys to tone the "ping" down and give them a heftier feel and sound.

I dont love the stock stabilizers that come with this board so they may be the next update. Switches and Firmware are already all custom.

Keychron K4v2, put some LSA Keychron Developer caps on it. Required a little modification to shave down the stabs but I like the look, now I just need to fix the sound since the reduced mass of the cap leaves some snap back ping on larger keys.

Thanks ADHD I really needed to go down the rabbit hole for a single actor and pull all the threads. I'm sure it won't have consequences.

This is my daily, I have tried others yet I keep coming back to this one. Fact is I like having a num pad, and F-Keys as i use them frequently with work.

My K4v2 runs custom SonixQMK which is Via compatible, I primarily do it my self because I have some particular custom keycodes that cant just be macro's as they need to pass through the HID port on my KVM.

Switches are a blend of Kailh Royal Box and Kailh Silent Browns.

The switches are the Royal Box base, Royal Box Spring combined with the Silent Brown hammer (green bit), Silent brown Stem, and Silent Brown top housing. The result is a quiet heavy switch with a robust tactile bump.

When I built the switches I tested with both the Silent Brown Hammer (green) and the Royal Box hammer (brown) and was shocked to find that they felt very different. The Royal box hammer ended up being about 0.12mm longer and it overwhelmed the contact on the Silent browns. In the end I decided to use the Contact from the Royal Box with the slightly shorter Silent Brown hammer and found it the best combination of strong tactile bump.

I also found that with the longer hammer the noise was far more noticeable.

So, never thought i would suggest a form of crypto or token, but it struck me that one of the best ways to help people pay for hosting services would be to create a de-centralized crypto token that when awarded to a user it is send on the back end to their instance.

If we put this token on some of the exchanges then people could pay with either real money by buying tokens and gifting/awarding them, or converting other crypto into Fediverse tokens.

We could even use the same blockchain to allow minting of one off or limited run tokens where users can create their own.

Would also be cool if awards attach to the profile and are federated, but with the ability to make tokens private by the user.

Just a thought, because someone wanted to give me gold for a post, and I linked to our donation page, but man it would be easy if they could have just purchased a token and sent it right then and there without having to go through all the different instance donation methods.

Sadly, I am not a programmer so hopefully this idea is worth a shit and one of you smart people takes it and runs.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/45198

A while back after it was announced I purchased the Q0 to test its use as a macro pad. As part of that I figured why not do some pictures and write a little review.

The Good:

• Quality packaging means it wont be damaged in shipping
• The included C to C cable is great, and a good length
• The included A to C adapter is useful to have!
• The Foam between the plate and PCB is good quality
• QMK/VIA support is essential and works well
• ALU is good quality and well machined
• lots of little quality details, like rubber pads between the base and top of the case to keep it from rattling or shifting around.
• USBC port is on a daughter board that is replaceable separate from the main PCB.
• Screw in stabs

The Meh:

• The encoder is soldered not socketed so you cant swap it with something else or replace it.
• The encoder feels like garbage to me, it has "scratchy drag" and a the tactile feedback extreme and each step feels like its locking into position.
• The screws holding the case together require an Alan key, while on the inside the USBC port is screwed to the case using Phillips.... Why why are there two different types of screws!
• PCB and Plate are screwed using Phillips as well.
• Masonite (maybe) paper is glued to the bottom of the PCB to prevent shorts, but is a PITA to separate.

The WTF:

• listing says it has case foam on the bottom, mine does not.
• gasket is way to soft for me, i would have preferred a much stiffer foam, so I will have to replace this.

Overall, its nice, if you dont have a num-pad and are looking for a very high end, high quality one with extra macro tools this is a great fit. If you like stiff springs/switches you probably wont like the Gasket.

Build: 8/10 Feel: 4/10 Features: 8/10 Value: 6 /10

A while back after it was announced I purchased the Q0 to test its use as a macro pad. As part of that I figured why not do some pictures and write a little review.

The Good:

• Quality packaging means it wont be damaged in shipping
• The included C to C cable is great, and a good length
• The included A to C adapter is useful to have!
• The Foam between the plate and PCB is good quality
• QMK/VIA support is essential and works well
• ALU is good quality and well machined
• lots of little quality details, like rubber pads between the base and top of the case to keep it from rattling or shifting around.
• USBC port is on a daughter board that is replaceable separate from the main PCB.
• Screw in stabs

The Meh:

• The encoder is soldered not socketed so you cant swap it with something else or replace it.
• The encoder feels like garbage to me, it has "scratchy drag" and a the tactile feedback extreme and each step feels like its locking into position.
• The screws holding the case together require an Alan key, while on the inside the USBC port is screwed to the case using Phillips.... Why why are there two different types of screws!
• PCB and Plate are screwed using Phillips as well.
• Masonite (maybe) paper is glued to the bottom of the PCB to prevent shorts, but is a PITA to separate.

The WTF:

• listing says it has case foam on the bottom, mine does not.
• gasket is way to soft for me, i would have preferred a much stiffer foam, so I will have to replace this.

Overall, its nice, if you dont have a num-pad and are looking for a very high end, high quality one with extra macro tools this is a great fit. If you like stiff springs/switches you probably wont like the Gasket.

Build: 8/10 Feel: 4/10 Features: 8/10 Value: 6 /10

If you have an older K series Keychron keyboard that includes a Sonix MCU you can flash to a custom firmware that supports QMK/VIA so you dont have to use the garbage stock software.

I really want to setup an instance at home I know the MI25 can be hacked into doing this well but I would love to know what other people are running and see if I can find a good starter kit.

THX ~inf