If you are looking to bring some bling to your desktop just take a look at this cool new peripheral campaign on Kickstarter by Das Keyboard. It’s a mechanical keyboard known as the Das Keyboard 5Q. There are loads of these types of keyboards spread across every corner of the World Wide Web with some as cheap as chips. However we dont think you will find 1 quite like the 5Q, as this bad boy connects to the cloud.
Yep, you read correctly the 5Q connects directly to the Internet. And get this,each key is lit by an RGB LED individually and can be colored-controlled remotely. Why would I want that? I hear you ask, well that is because they glow in a specified color based on the information you have provided. That way, you can determine what browser tab is hogging the CPU in real time and shut it down without a second thought. Das Keyboards think its possible for users of the 5Q to use these lit keys as visual notifications in a whole range of tasks.
The new 5Q mechanical keyboard comes with Gamma Zulu RGB switches by Omron , which overall have a total travel distance of 3.5mm, and have a life expectancy of 100 million actuation’s. They have a very soft tactile feel and are likened to Cherry MX brown switches. The Das Keyboard Q software is activated via a special rotary-style “Q button” mounted on the top-right corner of the keyboard. Notifications are set up using the “Q button” which in turn are then stored on the users cloud servers.
The company makes some really impressive claims on the kickstarter page about this keyboard,for instance “The Das Keyboard 5Q detects a key press in 0.4 milliseconds and reports it to the computer in 1 millisecond,” and “99-percent of mechanical keyboards use an outdated polling system that takes between 20 to 45 milliseconds to report a key to the computer. So, the Das Keyboard 5Q is up to 45 times faster than the keyboard you are using today. We named this technology Real-Time One — or, RTO in short. At its heart, it is an analog technology.”
Examples provided by Das Keyboard state that a user can set up the keypad to show the progress of a project. As an example we call it “New product launch.” Over the next six months, the lighting on the key will change from orange to green.Indicating the projects completion and targets achieved. A user can get specific information by pressing the Q button, that in turn sends an electrical discharge of 5-volts to the keyboard’s on-board CPU, which will then request specific information. In this case, the desktop notifies the user that the project is completed by displaying the green keys.
Another example of the keyboard’s ability include using it as a real-time stock ticker, this can be done simply by setting up colored notifications,indicating the status of software development, displaying current CPU load, urgent email management, project management, and loads more.There will be a community-driven website open for all developers to create widgets that can be shared with owners to make improvements to the keyboard. This is all possible because the company’s Rest API is open-source software.
The project already has 894 backers, who in turn have pledged $119,416, the Kickstarter campaign set out to achieve $100,000 before July 30. Pledge tiers span from $1 to $899 or more, with the latter tier offering to add the name of the individual to the 5Q firmware and the “About” section of the desktop software. Delivery for backers is estimated to be around December 2016 or January 2017. The Das Keyboard 5Q looks certain to make its mark.