Corsair #rgbgate: K65/K70/K95 RGB support only 512 colors

[davkol]

What the title says, Corsair K65/K70/K95 RGB support only 512 colors. sauce #rgbgate Kappa.

BTW I'm curious about Logitech G910 and Razer BW Chroma (and whoever does the same bling thing).

[SpAmRaY]

man they are making good use of the tramp stamp then

read most of that thread and seems like a few of those guys know what they are talking about

[NeedAFix]

Actually the RGB series does 16.8 million colors.

Don't know where you got this info from, but it is wrong, so wrong.

I've posted a video of it in my "new members" thread.

[davkol]

Panasonic A32181 doesn't support advertised 10 levels of backlighting.

[NeedAFix]

Have you actually used the keyboard and attempted to do with it what you want, or are you just going by technical details?
The panasonic chip they used might be messed with in-house.

http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=64261.0 there is the thread with the link to the video, check out the video. What are you trying to do that makes it seem like it doesn't have all the colors you want? I'm not seeing the big picture in this situation.

[davkol]

If the protocol uses three bits per channel, how do you send the rest there?

[NeedAFix]

I don't really see any issues, to me, the keyboard is beautiful.

It seems you are just focused on raw technical details and honestly I don't see it playing out. You also have to remember this has an ARM processor which might help the panasonic chip.
From my video on amazon you can see that it can do any of the colors, combinations of colors, level of lighting, effects and in any direction that you want.
The keyboard really is amazing, there is no reason to be ragging on it.

"All of the lighting in the key switches connects to a custom lighting controller and a powerful ARM processor to control both the lighting and the keyboard 104-key rollover matrix."

I'd say these quotes from corsairs website makes your points completely moot.

Try one and see if you can make the color profile you want before complaining about the technical aspects that may or may not have any baring on this board.
Also, don't disregard anything until you have first hand experience. Grapevines with their degrading Second Hand information don't tend to provide accurate results.

Seriously though, I don't understand what your issue is.

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/september/corsairk70rgb
"Featuring the world’s first German-engineered Cherry MX RGB key switches as part of a limited-time Corsair exclusive, the  K70 RGB allows for 16.8 million per-key color animated back-lighting by utilizing an on-board ARM processor and a powerful lighting controller that uses new software to display fully customizable lighting effects such as gradient and ripple patterns.  The software will also allow for powerful key sequencing actions across multiple modes and profiles in conjunction with the lighting. Furthermore, all standard keys on the K70 are remappable, replacing the need for dedicated macro keys."

[davkol]

The keyboard doesn't store that data, it's sent over USB from the host, three bits per channel—I'd be helpful, if you could post a communication dump to show otherwise.

[NeedAFix]

"Onboard memory to take performance and lighting settings with you
36KB of on-board memory to store performance and lighting settings use on other PCs".

I'd post a communication dump (if I knew how to collect the info) but I figure you'd find something wrong with that too.

You are being nitpicky about something that probably isn't even in this board, it is as if you didn't read my post at all.
If you really want the real technical details, by all means, go ask Corsair Support -- they should be able to provide you with all the info you could ever dream of and more, unlike myself.

The keyboard is amazing, too bad you don't think so I guess.

"Display controller driven fast and fluid 16.8M multicolor animation"

"To solve the single LED limitation and provide a keyboard that could meet everyone’s specific preferences for LED backlighting, Corsair approached Cherry, one of the world leaders in product innovation. They took our request and  by working together, the two companies designed an entirely new switch while retaining the definitive characteristics of a Cherry key switch. The requirements—the feel, reliability, and range of switches—could not be compromised. It was important that the characteristics of the switch did not change simply because of RGB. The RGB would have to be a feature on top of a switching retaining its Cherry identity. In order to meet these standards, Cherry made adjustments to how the LED lighting was mounted. "

"Rather than adding the LED directly onto the key switch, Cherry used a precise, computer- calculated lens in place of where the LED used to be. The RGB LED would then be surface mounted (SMD-LED) directly onto the keyboard’s PCB. The two benefits of this new design were apparent:
1.)    RGB is now possible since the light emitted by the diode shines through the lens and emits a similar effect to the previous 3mm single-color LED model.
2.)    With the RGB LED directly mounted onto the PCB, reliability is also gained by reducing the chances of ESD (electric static discharge) occuring, the leading cause of LED failure on keyboards.
All of the lighting in the key switches connects to a custom lighting controller and a powerful ARM processor to control both the lighting and the keyboard 104-key rollover matrix."

I don't know what else to tell you...

[davkol]

Corsair support has been dead silent for about 10 days.

Are you a fanboy, or worse, a paid shill? Because that would explain your quotes of irrelevant marketing buzzspeak.

[NeedAFix]

I'm just going with the information I have access to and this is what I Get for trying to help people.

Whatever dude, whine and complain about an amazing keyboard while I have fun with it -- I don't care anymore, Have a Good Day.

[dorkvader]

you can dither to approximate. Screens do this all the time. How fast can the panasonic switch those 3 bits? If it can switch between states fast enough, they can probably get more colours. Just like older 6 bit panels approximate 8 bit (16.7M) colours.

Bit of a difference between 3 bits and 8 though.

more info was posted in the reddit topic here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2ij2um/corsair_k70_rgb_usb_protocol_reverse_engineering/

Panasonic A32181 doesn't support advertised 10 levels of backlighting.

Still reading through, but where was it posted that this is the chip they used? I notice that the reverse engineering of the protocol information is pretty informative and appears that the software is only throwing 3 bits (out of a possible 4, looks like 0000 is white and 0777 is black) at it.

edit: some speculation about the chips it's using:
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=735749&postcount=45

edit: confirmed by anandtech review pictures:
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=735763&postcount=49


edit:

actually making each key 8-bit would involve rewriting the PWM channel register very very quickly as it scans the matrix, something that is likely not happening (and dare I say impossible?)

It could in theory support that with a firmware update but if I understand correctly it would be quite hard for the KB hardware to actually support that. It could be done if you switched the brightness very slowly. I think they wolud need to change from PWM to current limiting to get it to support enough colour as well as be fast enough to work at all. or superfast PWM frequency and I don't think any chips support that. I'd have to do some looking and reading datasheets.

edit: panasonic marketing is misleading, perhaps panasonic mislead corsair?
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=735791&postcount=53

They'd need 9 chips (3 per channel) for full advertized colours. and even then it might not work.

I have to go to work now, but I recommend reading all the info before making a decision.

[strict]

The issue is false advertisement. It doesn't matter if you can get the color you want or if the board looks good/bad or any of the other points you're trying to make, NeedAFix. It matters because the RGB back-lighting is the biggest selling point of the board and it can only create a fraction of the colors it's advertised to be able to make. It would still be huge problem if it made 65536 colors (16bit) instead of 16.8 million (24bit), but being limited to 512 colors is light-years from what they are advertising.

If I bought a Porsche that was supposed to put out 700hp but I find out it can only create 200hp that's a huge issue. It doesn't make the car look less cool and it doesn't prevent me from driving from point A to point B, but it does make the product significantly different from what was sold to me.

[dorkvader]

it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:

source

also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/

[midnightmare]

The issue is false advertisement. It doesn't matter if you can get the color you want or if the board looks good/bad or any of the other points you're trying to make, NeedAFix. It matters because the RGB back-lighting is the biggest selling point of the board and it can only create a fraction of the colors it's advertised to be able to make. It would still be huge problem if it made 65536 colors (16bit) instead of 16.8 million (24bit), but being limited to 512 colors is light-years from what they are advertising.

If I bought a Porsche that was supposed to put out 700hp but I find out it can only create 200hp that's a huge issue. It doesn't make the car look less cool and it doesn't prevent me from driving from point A to point B, but it does make the product significantly different from what was sold to me.

This is the point, you can't make claims to millions of colors as a blatant lie. It could be the absolute greatest keyboard on earth in every other aspect, but it still wouldn't change the fact that they are flat out lying to their customers. It might be changed with a firmware update, although that is extremely doubtful since they went completely silent from being called out. Leaving customers in the dark about release dates is one thing, but not addressing straight up false advertisement is another. Very interested to see how they respond to this

[jwaz]

it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:

Show Image

source

also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/

 :)) :)) :))

#shotsfired

[davkol]

it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:

Show Image

source

also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/

 :)) :)) :))

#shotsfired

It was posted by a CM Storm representative, after all.

[tp4tissue]

hahahahahahaha.....

technically, the lawyers can still argue "what is a Color, really"  since there are infinite steps of each color.. providing any color would produce infinite variations on the quantum level..

So Corsair actually downplayed the greatness of their product from Infinity color support to 16.8 million..

[zennasyndroxx]

Hopefully an update fixes this though im not using it. I think the problem here isnt with the rgb delivers 16.8m colours. Its more like consumers feel cheated when they buy something different than what is advertised

[divito]

Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.

[nubbinator]

Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.

Considering how horrible Corsair is with firmware and software, I'm guessing that could be a huge part of it.  Link has had massive issues and they had some huge firmware issues with their SSDs in the past.

[oscillik]

Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.

Considering how horrible Corsair is with firmware and software, I'm guessing that could be a huge part of it.  Link has had massive issues and they had some huge firmware issues with their SSDs in the past.

Corsair Link still has major issues with both the firmware and the software. After the bad experience I've had with the Corsair Link, I'll likely never touch anything by Corsair that relies on software again.

[tp4tissue]

i don't get it.. why do ya'll care...  this corsair k stuff is all n00b gear...

[Grendel]

Makes for entertaining reads tho My bet is that Corsair will backpedal and claim "512 out of 16.6m colors". Corsair always had mediocre soft- and firmware at best, for trying to display more than 512 colors at the same time they would need to hire engineers they can't afford (or are not willing to pay.)

[dorkvader]

Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.

It's in the hardware. The chips can't drive RGB LEDs at more than a few bits each.

The following posts explain it:
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=735749&postcount=45
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=735791&postcount=53

it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:

Show Image

source

also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/

 :)) :)) :))

#shotsfired

I thought it was worth a few LOLs.

[jacobolus]

Seems likely that the engineering department and marketing department weren’t communicating very well, before this thing got built.

Anyway, leaves some nice room for someone else to come in and make a keyboard with a more capable LED controller, and advertise how many extra millions of colors it supports.

(Personally I think backlighting in general is a silly gimmick, aimed at a demographic who loves silly gimmicks.)

[ComradeSniper]

Hahaha, wow. I can't wait to see Corsair's response to this.

[strict]

Seems likely that the engineering department and marketing department weren’t communicating very well, before this thing got built.

Anyway, leaves some nice room for someone else to come in and make a keyboard with a more capable LED controller, and advertise how many extra millions of colors it supports.

(Personally I think backlighting in general is a silly gimmick, aimed at a demographic who loves silly gimmicks.)

The only issue with that is that Corsair has a one-year exclusivity agreement with Cherry so for the next little while any competitors would have to use knock-off switches. I will be more curious to see if Cherry has anything to say about this ordeal than Corsair. I cant imagine them being too happy that their brand new RGB switches had a bungled launch due to Corsairs incompetence or cost-cutting.

[byker]

Seems likely that the engineering department and marketing department weren’t communicating very well, before this thing got built.

Anyway, leaves some nice room for someone else to come in and make a keyboard with a more capable LED controller, and advertise how many extra millions of colors it supports.

(Personally I think backlighting in general is a silly gimmick, aimed at a demographic who loves silly gimmicks.)

The only issue with that is that Corsair has a one-year exclusivity agreement with Cherry so for the next little while any competitors would have to use knock-off switches. I will be more curious to see if Cherry has anything to say about this ordeal than Corsair. I cant imagine them being too happy that their brand new RGB switches had a bungled launch due to Corsairs incompetence or cost-cutting.

I thought that the one year exclusivity was almost up, as Corsair took so long to release the rgb boards. Also I could see a different company designing a new board then waiting for the agreement to be over to release it.

[jacobolus]

Competitors will just have to use Matias switches... but that’s okay, the keyboards will thus end up nicer to type on as well as supporting more colors.

[nubbinator]

Competitors will just have to use Matias switches... but that’s okay, the keyboards will thus end up nicer to type on as well as supporting more colors.

That's ok.  Alps>MX.

#shotsfired  #realalpsreallyarebetter #matiasisok #corsairsuxors

[Grendel]

The plot thickens:

During development of the keyboard and prior to the release of the RGB keyboard, we came across an issue regarding the possible color combinations. In an effort to get the product out to our customers as committed, we made the tough decision to resolve the issue in a future software release as we believe our customers would enjoy the product as-is.

Here are the specifics that detail the issue:
Due to USB stack size and performance issues, we had to reduce MCU processing overhead in the best and quickest manner. The LED controller gives us greater than 8 bits of color depth but we use the 8 bits that give us what we believe to be the best color granularity. Our controller architecture provides for over 100 million color combinations out of which we select 16.8 million to display. We devised a color palette scheme to encode and compress the RGB color data and the data to select and control the “current sources” that drive the LED array. An unfortunate side effect is that it prevented us from utilizing the full color depth available from the LED controller.

We are in the process of making the necessary improvements so that we can send the uncompressed RGB data to the keyboard. Additionally, we are optimizing the data protocol and LED driver/display algorithms through the display control firmware to handle the uncompressed data, and to more efficiently program the “current sources” that drive the LED array. This should give our most “resourceful” customers an easy way to identify the data and be able to easily send standard RGB 8 bit values.
This enhancement had already been planned and will be implemented in a few weeks by the release of a software update, which will be announced and be made available to download here and at Corsair.com.

- Corsair Team

[nubbinator]

tl;dr ****, you guys found out we released yet another product before it was ready.  We're going to release an update that will fix some problems, but will likely **** up things even more; however, since we're releasing an update, we can say we're working on it and we didn't really deceive you in our marketing, it was just a feature we were going to roll out in the future.

This is typical of Corsair.  It's why I refuse to buy anything they sell.  They cover up problems until they're too big to ignore, half ass "fixes", then eventually get the issue resolved all while charging an arm and a leg and passing the blame.

[byker]

tl;dr ****, you guys found out we released yet another product before it was ready.  We're going to release an update that will fix some problems, but will likely **** up things even more; however, since we're releasing an update, we can say we're working on it and we didn't really deceive you in our marketing, it was just a feature we were going to roll out in the future.

This is typical of Corsair.  It's why I refuse to buy anything they sell.  They cover up problems until they're too big to ignore, half ass "fixes", then eventually get the issue resolved all while charging an arm and a leg and passing the blame.

Yeah, pretty ****ty that they released them broken, and even worse that they didn't even say anything at the time..

[dorkvader]

fortunately:

So... there's a reasonable chance they can pull it off?

More than a reasonable chance, our hardware is much more capable than what has been suggested so far (which was why we wanted to ensure our engineers could describe it properly for everyone to understand).

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736567&postcount=109

[SpAmRaY]

So basically they need better software engineers to make proper use of the hardware?

On a side note I spent about 45 seconds with a K65 at best buy and if nothing else, I liked the case.

[dorkvader]

So basically they need better software engineers to make proper use of the hardware?

On a side note I spent about 45 seconds with a K65 at best buy and if nothing else, I liked the case.

I would say basically they rushed it out with the hopes of fixing it later. The engineer guys in the thread who were figuring it out have estimated that it is entirely possible for them to fix this with just software.

More

It doesn't sound easy at all, but if they optimize it well, yes. With the new numbers we have 144 LEDs updating at 194Hz. 144*194 = 27936 LED scan frames per second. That means 35uS per LED frame. Considering that the palette supports 7 (possibly 8 but I'm not certain) independent PWM values at once, that means you only have to update the palette every 7 LED frames, or 7*35 = 245uS. That is more lenient than the 115uS I came up with earlier. Since we know now that the SPI clock frequency can be up to 10MHz as opposed to 1MHz, that cuts our previous bit time of 1uS down to 0.1uS. The SPI write takes 16 bits (making my 2-byte assumption correct) which is 8 bits for write flag and address and 8 bits for data. It looks like you must specifiy address for each byte written. 16 bits * 0.1uS = 1.6uS per write. However, now you're updating the entire palette rather than just one LED, so that becomes 1.6uS * 7 = 11.2uS to update the entire palette (not including delays between transfers). Now you need to do this three times because there are three drivers to update. If they wired all of them on the same bus, this takes 11.2uS * 3 = 33.6uS but if they are using three independent SPI busses this could still only be 11.2uS plus a bit of processing time. That means updating 11.2uS over a period of 245uS, which seems more reasonable. This still seems to be a very high demand on the CPU and will require perfect synchronization, but if they optimize well it does seem doable, though pushing the limit.

from http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736563&postcount=107

[jacobolus]

So basically they need better software engineers to make proper use of the hardware?

To be fair, I’m convinced that almost all electronics hardware companies are totally incompetent at programming and user interface design. For evidence, just look at the atrocious UIs and buggy broken software on TVs and stuff that plugs into TVs, game consoles, car stereos, non-iPod music players, wireless routers, drip coffee makers, refrigerators, every phone before 2007, etc...

[quake4mhg]

Didn't know each color (3 led combined) on each switch is not permanently store, it relies the arm chip refreshes to our eyes.
Glad to learn something new everyday in GH

[_PixelNinja]

Cherry has got to be real happy right now to have set up an exclusivity deal with Corsair... What a shame.

[OverKill]

Unfortunately with the internet it is not uncommon for people to release something "almost done" and then patch it in a week or a month. Sadly this is what high speed internet and mass information has come to. Remember when it took 2 years or more for a game to come out and when it did it had very few bugs? Yea.. me too

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Watford Electronics Quest Paint (written for a computer with no graphical desktop of any kind — the mouse actually came with the paint package) had one bug, and the bug was documented clearly in the manual (on occasion, flood fill would hang and you'd have to press Esc to cancel). After using it for several years I never found another bug.

Now it's a miracle if I can try a program and not break it completely within minutes ;-)

[wes1099]

It is disappointing that people are getting so jimmy rustled because their keyboard only 512 colors. Think about it. That is 512x more colors than you used to be able to get in a mechanical board.

[nubbinator]

It is disappointing that people are getting so jimmy rustled because their keyboard only 512 colors. Think about it. That is 512x more colors than you used to be able to get in a mechanical board.

People got jimmies rustled because of false advertising.

Think of it this way, imagine if Nvidia released a great big, awesome, and expensive video card.  They tell you it will play anything on the market flawlessly and that you'll easily get 60+ FPS when you play.  Then when you go to play a game with your high end system, everything is a choppy 30FPS.  That's what you see here. You have people who were expecting color matching and flawless color transitions and instead got choppy, stuttering color changes.

Now tell me you wouldn't be disappointed and you wouldn't have your jimmies rustled.

[wes1099]

It is disappointing that people are getting so jimmy rustled because their keyboard only 512 colors. Think about it. That is 512x more colors than you used to be able to get in a mechanical board.

People got jimmies rustled because of false advertising.

Think of it this way, imagine if Nvidia released a great big, awesome, and expensive video card.  They tell you it will play anything on the market flawlessly and that you'll easily get 60+ FPS when you play.  Then when you go to play a game with your high end system, everything is a choppy 30FPS.  That's what you see here. You have people who were expecting color matching and flawless color transitions and instead got choppy, stuttering color changes.

Now tell me you wouldn't be disappointed and you wouldn't have your jimmies rustled.

Yeah, I understand that there was some false advertising, but more colors has absolutely no functionality while in your analogy, FPS does effect functionality. Anyways, the only thing that will not look as good with 512 colors apposed to 16.8 million is that the mode where you fade between colors might look a little choppy.

[wes1099]

tl;dr ****, you guys found out we released yet another product before it was ready.  We're going to release an update that will fix some problems, but will likely **** up things even more; however, since we're releasing an update, we can say we're working on it and we didn't really deceive you in our marketing, it was just a feature we were going to roll out in the future.

This is typical of Corsair.  It's why I refuse to buy anything they sell.  They cover up problems until they're too big to ignore, half ass "fixes", then eventually get the issue resolved all while charging an arm and a leg and passing the blame.

Yeah, pretty ****ty that they released them broken, and even worse that they didn't even say anything at the time..

This happens all the time with lots of companies because people build up so much hype around a product that the company feels pressured to release it earlier, and they end up releasing a broken product. A great example is BF4. They rushed to get it done so it had loads of issues.

[nubbinator]

People buy the card for smooth framerates without choppiness and they buy a backlit RGB keyboard for the full range of colors and smooth color transitions.  In both cases, it is an aesthetic thing.  Both products work and do what they're supposed to do at the basic level, that being output video and provide input to the computer with attractive backlights, but both do it differently than advertised and in a way that provides a less than satisfactory experience.  I felt the analogy was apt since, in both cases, you end up with choppiness that your paying a premium price was supposed to avoid.

[katushkin]

Cherry has got to be real happy right now to have set up an exclusivity deal with Corsair... What a shame.

Only until the end of 2014

[wes1099]

People buy the card for smooth framerates without choppiness and they buy a backlit RGB keyboard for the full range of colors and smooth color transitions.  In both cases, it is an aesthetic thing.  Both products work and do what they're supposed to do at the basic level, that being output video and provide input to the computer with attractive backlights, but both do it differently than advertised and in a way that provides a less than satisfactory experience.  I felt the analogy was apt since, in both cases, you end up with choppiness that your paying a premium price was supposed to avoid.

You can not play a game with low framerates as well as you can with high framerates, but you can use a keyboard with slightly choppy color transitions just as well as you could use a keyboard with smooth color transitions. I am pretty that the premium price was due to the fact that it was the only RGB mechanical board for a little while, and it is still the only genuine cherry mx RGB board out there. I am not saying that people are wrong for being a little jimmy rustled because they bought a product expecting something that was not provided in reality, but they should get over it. Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.

[dorkvader]

Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.

People get all mad when they are lied to. It's understandable.

Corsair promised a keyboard with 16.2 million colours. Turns out they are actually 512 colours, While that's 510 more than other keyboards, its 16 million less than they were promised.

Why does this matter? Well corsair says they'll fix it, but when they come out with the new version of the software and say it's fixed, why should we trust them again? They promised me 16 million colours when I first bought it, why shoudl I trust them now (or ever)? That's the issue here.