i have the misfortune of being the guy my friends, family etc call when their computers go bork and one of the little things that just really shine is the easy function-key-shortcut builtin to the board that will swap between windows- and mac style modifier layouts, it wound up being far more than some bellwhistle i initially thought it would be

unfortunately since it was my first real mech it also was something of a guinea pig. i learned to solder switches by swapping them out, and the connections are kinda janked now, and i sometimes have to wack it like an old TV to get it to register certain keypresses.

i'm currently using a durgod TKL, it's almost a suitable equal in all the areas that made me love the CM board.. but man i wish i'd been able to snag another masterkeys, even used, before the supply dried up.

Are you interested in a Masterkeys S with cherry blue switches?

I switched to a Durgod with brown switches and couldn't be happier.

After spending some time researching various aspects of keyboard design I come to conclusion that any ghosting or other artifacts are just lazy design.

These could have been explained decades ago when chips where expensive, but today you could technically just as easily devote a single pin to every key. On the other hand if you want to put diodes, surface mount diode cost (ie part + assembly) still pales in comparison to the cost of cheapest mechanical switch.

Rather than lazy, you should assume cheap. Consumer hardware is usually optimized to cut costs.

But if you put the switches in a 10x10 matrix, then you just need 10+10 = 20 pins, enabling a cheaper micro, cheaper interconnect from the membrane switches to the PCB, etc. That's the benefit, but it comes at the cost of that ghosting (unless you add extra complexity, like a diode in series with each switch). Good keyboard vendors try to lay out the matrix so important key combinations don't ghost, like any combination of modifiers, WASD, etc.

The alternative that I would suggest you consider is I/O expander chips so you can use any mcu with a handful of pins. MCP23 seems popular, see e.g. https://www.abelectronics.co.uk/p/54/io-pi-plus

https://eu.mouser.com/Semiconductors/Interface-ICs/Interface...

Edit: It’s “n-key rollover“

The other keyboard problem was debouncing. (Glad to see the spellchecker knows that word.) The proper way to debounce would be to have a key switch with three terminals. Cheap home computers didn't do that, obviously. Do modern keyboards do that?

I should have taken one apart last time I had one to throw away. Next time!

A keyboard is scanned by pulsing each row individually and checking which columns become active because a pressed key connects them. (Or vice versa.)

In (2), when the green row is pulsed, only the green column becomes active, because it's connected to the green row by the pressed key (upper left red dot).

In (4), when the upper of the two green rows is pulsed, both the green columns become active — the first because the upper-left red dot is pressed, and the second because there is a path through all three of the red dots (pressed keys). So the keyboard senses a key press at the dotless intersection, even though that key is not pressed.

Better keyboards solve this problem with a diode on each key, so that the roundabout path can't happen. Cheap keyboards rearrange the rows and columns into squiggly paths so that the three-key pattern doesn't happen very often, being especially careful with the modifier keys.

Ghosting on a discrete contact-switch keyboard is inexcusable, of course.

I am not sure about costs, though, I did not consider membrane keyboards for my research. Membranes are extremely cheap. Not just because of the membranes being cheap but also because there is no assembly (PCB is contacts, no assembly required for switches) and because there might not be need for double-sided PCB. In this case diodes could force double-sided PCB, vias, and maybe even double sided assembly.

However: I want tactility, and with regards to tactility very few switches actually beat good rubber domes. Not rubber domes as in topre, just generally. The switches that do provide tactility (I would say that the matias switches are a good example) have been less reliable than a good rubber dome for a lot more money(at least outside matias' own keyboards).

Also, with a lot of these non-cherry switches I have found binding issues, and as we all know binding is the keyboard antichrist.

The only solution to getting a properly tactile switch I have found to be to buy increasingly expensive switches and build your own board, which I have no interest in whatsoever, or just buying a buckling spring board, where you will get a lovely 2KRO for non-modifier keys (unicomp is updating their process and releasing the "new model m" btw).

After all this, I don't understand the craze for mechanical keyboards. For linear boards there is really no good option, but for typists a good dome board (with slider) will be just as good and cost less than half as much.

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If that's how bad they are at web design, I wonder how bad their products are.