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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Deoprad on Thu, 21 January 2021, 04:04:51

Title: Why do we need EC varmillo switches?
Post by: Deoprad on Thu, 21 January 2021, 04:04:51
What is the advantage Varmillo EC switches over Cherry like? With optical ones it is even more or less clear, but why make switches that are no different from classical mechanics?
Title: Re: Why do we need EC varmillo switches?
Post by: yui on Thu, 21 January 2021, 04:16:54
What is the advantage Varmillo EC switches over Cherry like? With optical ones it is even more or less clear, but why make switches that are no different from classical mechanics?
1 - EC is just a cool technology, completely invisible, almost magic when you do not understand it
2 - diversity is good
3 - to me EC seems better suited to a keyboard as light based systems will likely fail overtime thanks to dust
4 - Varmillo has been making cherry board for a while now, that should allow them to reuse part of their tooling to use those.
5 - experimentation is something that have been lacking in the industry for a long while, so we should welcome new ideas like this one.

the short of it is "why not?" that may bring the EC price down give that only the PCB needs to be redesigned to use this instead of MX style switches, and at worse it is a failure and as a whole we can learn from it.
Title: Re: Why do we need EC varmillo switches?
Post by: Deoprad on Thu, 21 January 2021, 05:16:11
What is the advantage Varmillo EC switches over Cherry like? With optical ones it is even more or less clear, but why make switches that are no different from classical mechanics?
1 - EC is just a cool technology, completely invisible, almost magic when you do not understand it
2 - diversity is good
3 - to me EC seems better suited to a keyboard as light based systems will likely fail overtime thanks to dust
4 - Varmillo has been making cherry board for a while now, that should allow them to reuse part of their tooling to use those.
5 - experimentation is something that have been lacking in the industry for a long while, so we should welcome new ideas like this one.

the short of it is "why not?" that may bring the EC price down give that only the PCB needs to be redesigned to use this instead of MX style switches, and at worse it is a failure and as a whole we can learn from it.

So, there is no point in looking for such switches, but I can safely take cherry?
Title: Re: Why do we need EC varmillo switches?
Post by: yui on Thu, 21 January 2021, 05:27:32
i thought you were asking why they existed, the reason why you would go for EC would be that it is contactless and so can be smoother than a contact based switch, like cherry. it only matters for linear though so if you want anything else i would not bother, well other than for the cool factor :)
Title: Re: Why do we need EC varmillo switches?
Post by: HungerMechanic on Wed, 27 January 2021, 21:10:34
It makes sense from Varmilo's standpoint, as they can compete with Topre / Niz without having to use their switches. They can offer a completely vertically-integrated, in-house design, which is how they prefer to operate.

Also, there isn't much diversity in EC-like switches. I'm glad this exists. I didn't thing Varmilo EC V1 was very noteworthy, but maybe V2 is an improvement. Anyone have any experience with it?