Keyboard Wonderland – ENGLISH Version – Part I
2.6 Optoelectronic switches
Or optical switches for short. These are also contactless and are built around a light sensor in every switch which detects the interruption of a light beam to close a contact. These are complex when compared to regular MX switches and offer a similar level of customisation to Hall Effect switches (height and sensitivity of actuation) albeit with a lower granularity. Unfortunately some manufacturers need to include a per-key stabiliser and this translates to a potentially rattly keyboard over time.
The issues are similar to the ones encountered with Hall Effect switches – if a switch dies it becomes improbable the keyboard will ever be repairable. Also the software depends entirely on the manufacturer dev quality and QA.
These are also quite smooth albeit a tad less smooth than Hall Effect switches since there are more moving parts making contact.
Comentarii
Kinesis copied Maltron.
Ian, I’m sorry, but if you point far enough backwards in time a germ gets blamed for splitting in two. Maltron had the ideas but the execution has been thoroughly terrible throughout time and they never caught on. At the same time I didn’t want to touch upon too much history because the article is complex enough as it is.
That being said, Kinesis is one of the first actually ergonomic keyboards that is actually good and was available and came up in searches online back around 2005ish, so I went with it as the contemporary origins. Maltron will always be remembered for this abomination which sold for $400 – https://youtu.be/fkGpFeUQ49Y
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