As mentioned Rama is mostly hotswap. 'nuff said. solderless electrical connections(also mentioned) have been used in industry for years for mission critical applications. All of the new supercars have "manumatic" transmissions. 'nuff said. This thread is so absurd already. don't you folks have anything better to do? I suppose the same could be said of myself but I have not even been here in two weeks. Actually participating in real life. Covid-19 and all. Mainly, who cares? If you do not like it do not buy one. Amazon has great soldered boards for $12. Right up your alley. Yes, they are mechanical. I actually found keycaps on amazon that blow away GMK For $7.99 for a set of 167 parts. They are 8MM thick! That's what is says. anyways what do I care? I like HS. I have over 70 Rama boards...…. Honestly GMK is better I have over 6,000 sets. Before you say no way you have to understand I am richer than Bezo's. In fact I own Bezo's. Let's discuss this.....
And plenty of those mission-critical solderless connections have failed. It is pretty common on older vehicles to have ghosts in the electrical systems that often narrow down to one, or more, wire harnesses that have corroded. When I replaced the windshield washer pump in my 2001 Saturn SC2, I seriously considered directly soldering the replacement in, especially since I used an off-brand pump that just came with bare wires. Ironically, in this case, it was the pump itself that had been compromised by moisture and had literally split open after years worth of rust. Cars are obviously, usually, subjected to much harsher conditions, but the point is that oxidation/corrosion is not a factor in properly-soldered electrical connections.
I'm not sure how "manumatic" transmisions factor in. It is good that they're finally getting ok fuel economy and response. I hope that they're not getting even more complex, because their reliability was already always terrible. My stick cars will always get me from A to B short of blowing the transmission up by throwing it into reverse on the highway or something. I think my only exception, in driving them exclusively (and the same one even) for the last 10-11 years, is that the shift cable broke once, so I couldn't shift the car out of 3rd gear. I could literally strip a gear out entirely and just skip it for the time being without too much trouble. My brakes went out entirely once ... on the highway. I engine braked down the off ramp and drove it home, carefully. Then I drove it 15 miles to a mechanic friend's place one night. lol
The whole point is that soldering is for people who want to do the job right once and be done, forever. I would think that most, if not all people, have at least 1 board that they're happy with and never plan to modify in the future and/or want to use it every day for years straight and not have to worry about it. There's no reason to introduce a point of failure to the equation if you don't plan on taking advantage of its benefits.
Hot swap is best for testing switches, modifications to switches, and different configurations of switches.
If people never want to learn to solder properly, or just want to be able to always have a board be in flux, for whatever reason, that's fine too.
There are just well-defined pros and cons to every approach.
P.S. I know you seem to always have problems with LEDS failing for some reason. I would have to find them again, but it does look like Aliexpress, or another retailer, sells LED hot swap sockets. They're not for SMD LEDs though.
