Weāve gone full circle lol
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Connecting a keyboard USB-C to USB-C (USB 2.0) is so darn temperamental 
even with well-designed daughterboards.
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I think itās been closer to 10-ish sets in GB per month this year. I actually counted the number of GMK GBs out of sheer curiosity:
- 76 GBs for 2019
- 109 GBs for 2020
- 139 GBs for 2021
This is mostly from aggregator websites. Jaw kinda had to drop at those numbers, and doesnāt look like GMK is going to stop taking orders anytime soon.
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Those group buy numbers doesnāt even portray how big it gotten, 2020 had over 120K base kits alone sold and itās without the big vendor group buys like NKās Disney kits.
People just straight up ignore how big it gotten or simply doesnāt care, the numbers are crazy.
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Not farfetched to think that GMK is using GBs as an immediate cash flow correction tool while making absolute bank lol (I think they had a 290% profit increase from 2019 to 2020). Probably donāt want people to realize that the pandemic might not have been very good for their corporate accounts so theyāre likely playing coy about being quite reliant on GBs.
Probably planning to use the money to pay down debts and find other more stable avenues to expand (in-stock deals, less keycaps; more other plastic stuff like their growing measuring instruments division, etc. etc.) Seems like the strategy given their very indiscriminate manner of accepting GBs. They donāt see the super custom keycap people as a long-term value partner. Just currently vital, but too temperamental and logistically inconsistent to dedicate too much of their resources to.
Additional Vaguely related Fun Fact: Did you know that Tecsee (dat 3k MOQ says a lot) is a source of those Aifei Doubleshot GMK Clones? Rumor has it that they bought the Aifei doubleshot cherry molds (they arenāt Aifei though, cause Aifei recently released āAifei SAā profile keycaps reminiscent of MG profile rather than SA). They were and also are still a health product manufacturer (menstrual cups lol). Never underestimate what weird unrelated stuff a plastics company is willing to diversify into hahaha.
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USB-c in general is such a cluster lol
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Mini USB master race.
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USB-B is the best no cap. IMO micro edges out mini a lil bit, mini wears out so damn quick
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Apple eco-system is all-in on USB-C/Thunderbolt (except the phones), so when done well itās great. But when itās not, itās a cluster indeed.
I think Micro and C are the best due to the tensioning mechanism (that keeps it in place) that wears out over time is in the cableās male end instead of the female port in the keyboard. Itās certainly way easier to replace a cable than a PCB/port, lol. And of course USB C is the far more durable of the two in this regard.
Yeah, C is definitely the best connector. My problem with it is how fragmented the whole ecosystem is; no way to tell what a cable supports (current for power delivery, alt modes, usb 2 or 3) and no indication whatās wrong when it doesnāt work. Having the resistors in the cable that set how much current it can carry relies on trusting the cable manufacturer, and there are a lot of scary cables out there with undersized wires. iirc DisplayPort requires an actual chip in the cable, which is a whole other thing
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Sure, but this is notā¦ really a USB C problem so much as itās a USB spec problem? These are all true about USB A or B as well, where thereās at most an agreement to make the in-connector shield blue to indicate support for 3 and then just-as-difficult-to-ascertain support for all of those other things (because thereās no ratified standard for how those should be communicated to consumers). I donāt know that it makes USB A or B inherently better than C that broadly nobody is making cables that support those newer USB spec technologies with them, because if they started to support those things (which are good, useful things) then both A and B would have the same problems.
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imo my issue is how obtuse it is. If you use something that is micro 3 with a receptacle that only supports 2 it will probably still work, albeit slowly (hard drive, etc; unless you have some sort of specialized peripheral that will only work with three, but in this case you will probably know what you need/where to plug it in). If you get one of these shitty keyboards that doesnāt have the CC resistors it will not work with a C to C cable and not be clear why. If you get a shitty cable that only supports say 20W charging and try to charge a laptop that wants 80W itās up to the laptop manu to tell you why itās charging slow and they might not bother. There are just too many ways for it not to work
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https://dangkeebs.com/products/quartz-v2
Seems like a good linear - Iāve only positive things to say about those P3 stemsā¦ but the spring bit has me squinting. ā_ā
These springs are made of Korean KOS steel & have different diameters on both the top and bottom. When the smaller diameter is inserted into the switch first, it will act as a complex spring. Alternatively, when the larger diameter is inserted into the switch, it will act as a slow spring.
Emphasis mine. This certainly sounds rad and is exactly the kind of thing that would pique my interestā¦ but Iāll be real, I have a hard time believing orientation of this spring will have that much of an effect - unless perhaps the stem and housing are designed to interact with each end of the spring differently.
@ajoflo This sounds cool, doesnāt it? I wonder if that description is truly accurateā¦
@Pylon What do you think - does that sound like shenanigans to you? Either way Iād love to see one of your force-curve graphs done-up for both configurations of this switch.
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Very nice! Yup, these are one of my Top 10 for sure. They got excellent reviews by ThereminGoat for its overall push/feel and wobble tolerances.
I found this pic from a V1 post and can confirm those poles sound and feel very pronounced on the downstorke. I paired them up with some MT3ās in a FR plate ā theyāre a lot of fun. Oh, and ePBT keycaps fit so snug, not too much, just enough to notice.
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Same. This sounds a bit like a sales pitch. I mean, thereās a whole series of āSlowā springs ā Extreme I, II, and III. I wonder which one ā¦ Only one way to find out I guess. Lol.
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my iPhone never autocorrects āthrā for me.
Really? Apple doesnt think that perhaps āthrā could be ātheā???
Sometimes it substitutes āRHRā What the actual F?
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Thr autocorrect ther is terrable
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GMK Minimal 
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