[ssl-3]

I'm cynical, too, and I have good reason to be.

I recently bought a Keychron TKL keyboard that uses Hall effect switches. It is, in my opinion, a lovely board to type on and so far I like it quite a lot. (Hopefully, this board with its socketed HE switches will serve longer than the previous board that had soldered Cherry MX Blues.)

It was advertised as being open-source and supporting QMK. Not at some time in the mysterious future, but right then. (And that's still true right now -- the web page is unchanged.)

But it does not have source available. The link for source code on the website lands at a Github page for a completely-unrelated keyboard, and I can't do anything at all with it using QMK. Extensive digging to find the source has resulted in zero positive results.

In the case of this Keychron keyboard, the promise of source code consists of resolute lies more than it does vaporware: The source is stated to openly exist, but it does not exist.

A question about this situation to their support email resulted in assignment of a ticket number, followed by silence.

So yeah, anyway: The cynicism is valid.

[deepsun]

Well technically they sold you product that does not satisfy description, so you can claim money back even after warranty period ends (same as factory bugs/mistakes, they cannot be put under warranty period).

[ssl-3]

I've got better things to do than to die on a hill made of a corporate lie that is worth less than $100.

[squigz]

Did you try contacting them and asking them about it?

[ssl-3]

Yes.

> A question about this situation to their support email resulted in assignment of a ticket number, followed by silence.

It's annoying, but it's not the end of the world.

I don't even really know what I'd do with QMK if I could use it. This is the first keyboard I've owned that was advertised to support QMK and I was kind of hoping to learn more about the kinds of clever things that can (and cannot) be done with it; I'm not sure what I'm missing out on here.

[justsomehnguy]

Remap Shift to CapsLock or whatever. I also have full mouse controls on the right side which is a gimmick but comes handy once in a while.

[ssl-3]

I think I can do all of that with Keychron's webusb interface (which works fine in Chrome, including with Linux after some permissions butchering): https://launcher.keychron.com

There's quite a lot that can be done in there including some mouse functions.

After some thought, I think I'd want QMK for weirder stuff.

Maybe steal a few pins for a rotary encoder that sticks out of the side and acts as a volume knob (I really like having physical knobs for volume).

Or RGB dumb stuff: Of the built-in RGB modes, I like "heatmap" the best. Areas of the keyboard light up with progressively-warmer colors as I type, and I think that's both fun and non-distracting.

It's an HE keyboard, so it knows the linear position of all of the keys with decent resolution. If it's got enough grunt to spare, it can calculate the velocity and end-travel point of each keypress.

So lazy typing can light up with a nice cool blue-ish heatmap, and faster-but-relaxed typing can eventually progress all the way through orange and red. It does this right now with its existing mode.

But with velocity and travel added as inputs: Furious, hard, high-velocity typing that really bottoms out the keys could start off being really red straight away, even if few keys have been pressed.

Or key repeat rates: If I want any random key to repeat Really Fast or Really Slow right now, maybe that can be made to be very dynamic thing thing by pressing that key harder or softer, or even vary throughout a single keypress by looking at the key's linear position. (Maybe I should patent that one. You read it here first, Mr. Patent Examiner.)

[squigz]

> > A question about this situation to their support email resulted in assignment of a ticket number, followed by silence.

Oh, my apologies, I missed that line.

> I don't even really know what I'd do with QMK if I could use it. This is the first keyboard I've owned that was advertised to support QMK and I was kind of hoping to learn more about the kinds of clever things that can (and cannot) be done with it; I'm not sure what I'm missing out on here.

I felt the same way before I started using it. Once you start though, you'll start thinking of ways to tweak it for your own workflow and pretty soon you won't be able to go without it.

[ssl-3]

One of these days, maybe I'll get an opportunity to explore it. :) I seem to be running across more people saying interesting things about QMK than I used to, but maybe some of that is just observational bias bringing it to the forefront.

If I may ask: What's good about it for your use?

[ValentinPearce]

Not the same user but I can chime in here. I'm mostly on a smaller split keyboard but having symbols accessible trough a layer without having to leave home row is definitely something I like to add to my keyboard configurations. That and home row modifiers or shortcuts I use often.