I wish there were more boards with solenoids

Sounds like, yes now Corsair owns Geekhack

https://kbd.news/Quick-weekly-BTS-2023-29-2064.html

They just put out a lot of mediocre products, mostly. Also they were hilariously rude to the creator of the MT3 profile (which is one of their signature accomplishments in the keyboard space)

Did Drop still own Geekhack? (In some ways Corsair acquiring Geehack would be the bigger story to me at least since Geekhack is one of the key places (especially excluding reddit) that interest checks and group buys are published.)

You have to go out of your way to find keycaps that aren’t MX-styled. But you may want to double check the layout and particularly the size of the spacebars, shifts, and the keys in the bottom row. Some gamer boards have nonstandard layouts.

Cannonkeys and Novelkeys have some good in-stock sets nowadays

Epistory is kind of fun. You may want to cross post to !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world

If you’re doing your own PCB, you could add splitkb tenting puck https://github.com/splitkb/tenting_puck

It says that “If everything works fine with your keyboard. Please don’t flash the firmware. There is a chance it can damage your keyboard”. I am aware that if I unplugged during a firmware update it could brick it, but otherwise it would work out fine, right? Would the reset button underneath the spacebar save me in that situation? It is hard to tell whether this is just keychron trying to go the safest route to avoid tech support calls or if this is actually a valid recommendation.

I’ve seen some stories of folks having issues with flashing cheap keyboards due to driver funkiness or other reasons. It would be weird to see a *good *keyboard PCB designer telling you not to flash firmware, though, because that’s a very normal thing for enthusiasts to do and the designer should be testing the board and its firmware to make sure it works.

In terms of Vial vs. Via, Vial is much more full-featured, and arguably a little less newb-friendly just because it has a lot more stuff you can mess with. Many boards have Vial support to begin with, but some don’t. I think it’s relatively easy to add Vial support to a board that has Via support, but I’ve never done this because I’m usually building QMK from the command line.

For short travel, you probably want either speed switches, kailh “pro” switches, or “long pole” switches. I’m not sure offhand the market for silent ones of those, though. There are a few websites that collate switch data, but they usually aren’t really kept up to date with new releases.

You can certainly get a functional mechanical keyboard on Amazon. If you haven’t used a mechanical keyboard at all and you want to try one out, I think buying a cheap gamer keyboard on Amazon and treating it as semi-disposable is quite reasonable.

If you want the ability to experiment with switches, look for one that has hotswap and cherry MX-style mechancial switches. If you want the ability to swap out for nicer keycaps, check and make sure the board uses a standard layout. Some consumer boards have unusually sized shift keys or space bars etc. that make them incompatible with many keycap sets.

Re: loud, this is also relative. Linear switches (red for lightweight ones, black for medium weight ones) will usually not be ultra loud, and you can also get “silent” switches, which have some dampening components.

It’s easy to find cheap fullsize boards with numpad and arrows. (It’s harder to find high end customs like this, though, as most enthusiasts prefer smaller boards.)

love a rolly boy encoder