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Comment by casenmgreen | Hacker News Reader

I hear insanely positive reviews of Hall effect, on the basis of being able to have different key behaviours depending how far down you press the key.

So simple example, in a game, walk is a half press and run is a full press.

You could imagine also semi-colon a half press and full colon from a full press.

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While you can assign multiple actions to one key with hall effect, the biggest benefit (for gaming at least) is what they call rapid trigger actuation. The idea is that instead of the key triggering and releasing at a specific point in its travel, it reacts to a change in direction so you can instantly switch from pressed to released or vice versa at any point in the keys travel.

I am extremely happy with the new Keychron K2 HE (https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k2-he-wireless-ma...) and am surprised hall effect keyboards didn't get mentioned in the original post. Even if the advantages are more gamer-oriented, setting low actuation distances and getting immediate keypress response is also a productivity plus, after getting practice to avoid making typos when you'd normally lay your fingers on other keys.

The one-key-multiple-actions is useful but also does require some muscle memory tweaks.

Ah, Keychron.

I looked at getting one of theirs.

The web-site is insanely confusing and completely fails to explain the differences between keyboards. It took two days of work to figure out what was going on and how keyboards varies and so which model I actually wanted.

I also found their site condescending and annoying - stupid banners which were permanently present on product pages on every little keyboard image saying I can't remember what now - something like "selling quickly so buy now". They're not there any more, far as I can see, so I can't check. Maybe someone else remembers them?

Granted, you can get it at Best Buy/Amazon if you're not a fan of the Keychron site: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/keychron-k2-he-75-custom-wirele...

Unfortunately the world of mechanical keyboards is indeed that nuanced.

I dunno, I bought a KeyChron K10 Pro a couple of months ago and I found it pretty easy to look for the things I wanted (2 super keys, 100% layout).

Keychron keyboard was the only one I decided to return when I had this hobby (I bought maybe 4 or 5 total). I believe it was Q-series from about 2020/2021. It was either full or slightly smaller but did not work well with Linux, and was inexplicably missing ScrollLock button (which incidentally is a hotkey used to switch devices on my KVM). I mean, the button was there, but had a different function and I wasn't able to make it work.

Looks like the ones listed currently are compatible with Linux (still missing the ScrollLock though), just take your time to review before buying something that might not work with your setup.

Analog pushbuttons tend not to have much success. The original Street Fighter for instance could select between light/medium/heavy attacks based on how hard you pushed buttons. It didn't last long before they got back to the familiar 6 button layout with simple switches.

The Playstation 2 had analog pushbuttons, essentially no one used them. Even analog triggers are mostly used as simple switches. Apple discontinued force touch too.

There is an advantage to Hall effect sensors for gaming keyboards though. It is that they don't have a set actuation point and it allows for a feature called "rapid trigger", greatly improving reactivity and tapping speed. It is particularly important for games like OSU!

I just want one to use as a MIDI keyboard.

I’m a tracker kid. Jeskola Buzz ftw. Give me velocity-sensitive QWERTY and I will finally be complete.

> velocity-sensitive QWERTY

Gosh. Would have never considered such a thing ...

PS. Also, perhaps, coupled with some sort of OSD-autocomplete based on key press velocity ...

... could be interesting just for typing. Messy, but interesting ...

Yes! Also, if I could use a rotary encoder knob to input midi cc information, I’d be happy.

> velocity-sensitive QWERTY

I would love to have a keyboard where if you hit the switches hard it automatically capitalizes the character. Then those late night nerd rages will be naturally in all caps as the switches are slammed in fury.

AND ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳˢ ʳᵉᵛᵉᵃˡ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵛᵉˡᵒᶜᶦᵗʸ ᵇᵘᵗ ⁿᵒᵗ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵖᵒˢᶦᵗᶦᵒⁿ

I’ve been eyeing a Hall effect board, but having used Swiftpoint Z mouse which has that pressure-based activation on several buttons, I must admit it’s the kind of feature that’s good on paper.

At least for me, it’s pretty hard to consistent reproduce “half press” and “full press” and if I wanted to do a “long press” I can easily set it up in QMK for any mechanical keyboard

With hall effect keyboards you can set the starting actuation of a "half press".

e.g. a start actuation of 0.5mm and full press of 3.0mm gives enough room to avoid false positive full presses.

Whenever I think about buying one, I can't find one that's got a simple way to have it detect as a game controller so that I can easily read the actuation force or a velocity when a user presses a key.

If there was a simple way to do this, it would make a really fun experimental input peripheral tool.

My dream is for the following:

- low profile hall effect switch - mx stems - tactile - quiet or almost silent - adjusting the actuation actually adjusts the travel

So the last item you could set up an ultra "short throw" switch

I have gotten close by making a frakenswitch of multiple switches, but would be amazing to programmatically create this

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