i-Rocks switch

Elrick · 24 May 2016, 10:19

Muirium wrote: ↑I didn't say it was the only trick! Another great one: destroy your competitors, by any means necessary.

This is a Taiwanese company hence they won't need to do things like Microsoft can do, to their opponents.

In China where these new switches will be made and then shipped everywhere, all that matters is that someone buys them hence the orders will keep coming in for the keyboards (hopefully).

Bad for anyone else trying to live off the ALPs revival because the Chinese can step up the manufacture far easily and flood the market with their products, in a quicker time frame.

Oobly · 25 May 2016, 11:05

Looks like SA caps will probably fit these and should suit them nicely

infodroid · 02 Jun 2016, 22:34

i-Rocks have now launched an Indiegogo pre-order with lots of info in English...

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/i-ro ... traditions#/

Intriguing part is this:

The switch accepts Cherry MX and other keycaps. However, you can’t hand-wiring this switch on cherry keyboard cause the pin layout couldn’t be kept identically.

But what I really wanted to know is whether this is pin-compatible with Alps PCB!

Muirium · 02 Jun 2016, 22:39

Another good bit:

Updated News
We are in the news! Amazing!

[img]https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-p ... mmkigk.jpg[/img]

Edit: Huh, guess we need to support East Asian URLs in [ img ] tags. The image is here:

https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-p ... mmkigk.jpg

infodroid · 02 Jun 2016, 22:39

Glad to see deskthority on board!

infodroid · 02 Jun 2016, 23:14

Would be nice to get a couple dozen of these...

Hak Foo · 06 Jun 2016, 03:38

I just threw in on a blue-switch one.

Personally, I find everything a bit weird about this.

The damped-by-default is a little odd-- if you're trading on the ALPS-style concept, people are probably most familiar with their old white-ALPS Omnikey or FK-2001, or maybe a black-ALPS AT101W. The only "big seller" damped switch was probably the one in the AEKI series. I hope I can pull out the dampers if I don't care for them, without damaging the switches.

Second, the postage cost is astronomical for the US. USD105 or 129 for a full-size board competes okay with other RGB 104-key boards, but adding almost USD40 to ship pushes it into Matias Tactile Pro land.

infodroid · 08 Jun 2016, 13:36

Hak Foo wrote: ↑ The damped-by-default is a little odd-- if you're trading on the ALPS-style concept, people are probably most familiar with their old white-ALPS Omnikey or FK-2001, or maybe a black-ALPS AT101W. The only "big seller" damped switch was probably the one in the AEKI series. I hope I can pull out the dampers if I don't care for them, without damaging the switches.

Are all the i-Rocks switches dampened by default or only some of them? I could not find any confirmation of this. In fact, some of the videos show the sound of i-Rocks switches without the ORS dampening so I was unsure what to make of this.

Their ORS (ORing Silencing?) technology literally takes the form of a pair of o-rings on either side of the stem. I imagine this is easy to remove if you are so inclined.

I have come to prefer the sound and response of dampened switches. They can feel more precision engineered, for lack of a better term, which I greatly enjoy. So I am looking forward to trying out the dampened versions of these switches.

Muirium · 08 Jun 2016, 14:18

Hak Foo wrote: ↑The only "big seller" damped switch was probably the one in the AEKI series.

AEK II is damped creams. (Among other versions.) And Apple sold a lot more of those than its predecessor.

Anyway, I'm all for damped tactile switches. If people want loud: go clicky. And besides, MX can't do it, so that's a reason in itself!

infodroid · 08 Jun 2016, 15:04

Muirium wrote: ↑Anyway, I'm all for damped tactile switches. If people want loud: go clicky.

The interesting thing is that i-Rocks have possibly broken with conventions by dampening their clicky switch. So clicky may not be so loud in this case!

This reminds me of some hybrid switches Chryos once produced by mating a Matias Click leaf with a Quiet Click rubber dampened stem.

Chyros · 08 Jun 2016, 16:50

infodroid wrote: ↑
Muirium wrote: ↑Anyway, I'm all for damped tactile switches. If people want loud: go clicky.
The interesting thing is that i-Rocks have possibly broken with conventions by dampening their clicky switch. So clicky may not be so loud in this case!

This reminds me of some hybrid switches Chryos once produced by mating a Matias Click leaf with a Quiet Click rubber dampened stem.

Indeed, those were pretty interesting actually, I think a board with them in might turn out to be quite fun.

Or the worst of both worlds, who knows xD .

Muirium · 08 Jun 2016, 17:01

I was talking about doing the same thing to buckling spring! just yesterday. It's in here somewhere: as usual I was discussing several things!

workshop-f7/remodeling-the-model-m-t137 ... ps#p312870

See, clack (the whack sound when keys return to the top) is a different sound to click. I know I prefer Topre and Alps without it. Time to explore the clicky switches…

nateth · 24 Jun 2016, 17:01

I decided to give the blue board a shot. I absolutely love the Matias click switches that I modded with quiet click dampened stems. Superbly tactile but relatively quiet for a click switch. It's such a refined feel.

Chyros has a really cool video testing the Matias mods he did: https://youtu.be/Son03f8ul4E

I just wish i-Rocks would sell the switches by themselves. The whole Lego "fun" thing just seems dichotomous and niche. People who buy just for the lego aspect probably don't care about Alps switches, and those of us who want the switches probably want them in a different board. I just don't see a large cross-section of customers that really want this board for both aspects. IMHO.

Elrick · 25 Jun 2016, 04:51

nateth wrote: ↑I just wish i-Rocks would sell the switches by themselves. The whole Lego "fun" thing just seems dichotomous and niche. I just don't see a large cross-section of customers that really want this board for both aspects. IMHO.

You obviously underestimate the Power of Lego and those that collect them, only this time it comes with usable SWITCHES

.

nateth · 25 Jun 2016, 05:02

Ha. Fair enough. And you're right about Lego. I'm just obsessed with building the my first custom board and I'm whining because I want to get switches that I don't have to desolder.

Techno Trousers · 03 Nov 2016, 19:45

This is so odd. I'd missed this discussion the first time around, and found out about it via a post on Tom's Hardware yesterday. It says you can preorder at the indiegogo site, but that shows the project as closed with only 4 backers and $500 raised of a goal of $80,000.

So is this going forward? i-Rocks has a lush page set up for it, so it seems like it's coming out for real. But where and when?

infodroid · 03 Nov 2016, 20:05

I am glad the keyboard and the new switches are getting some more publicity. I held off on the Indiegogo campaign because the full-size keyboard doesn't appeal to me. I could buy a board or two to harvest the switches for a custom build. But it is still not clear to me whether the switches are going to be compatible with existing Alps PCB's and plates.

Chyros · 03 Nov 2016, 20:35

So, can you actually buy one of these commercially? I'm a bit confused by it all Oo .

infodroid · 03 Nov 2016, 21:07

As far as I know, the i-Rocks K76m has only just been released in Asia. And even then, only in limited quantities as production capacity allows.