Inductive Key Switches (Aesco a83)

[tp4tissue]

There was an obscure post 6 years ago on Reddit.

But now it's an actual product.

The switch center has a metal rod, the rod goes through a printed coil on the PCB, the AC current in the coil actively monitors the change in the field.

Pretty cool, it says the main benefit is standardizing switches so anyone can make a hotswap version, as opposed to hall effect which is extremely difficult to standardize.


It also mentions greater stability, Tp4 is not sure why this is inherently more stable, perhaps they mean they can achieve a tighter tolerances making the metal rods vs magnet slugs.

Anyway,  Pretty cool. Pretttty expensive, Direct from Aliexpress for $160ish.

I mean, all things considered, Fully suspended gasket mount, supports 8k polling wired, 4k polling wireless, 300h, 10000mah. You can give your money to razer and buy their old jank for a whole lot more.  And holy crap does this keyboard use an insane number of chips. You can see the back of the board pcb in the teardown video below, 1min 52 sec.

[BucklingSpring]

And holy crap does this keyboard use an insane number of chips.

I received my A83 yesterday. Keys feel different and amazingly smooth. The backlit is only around the keys. The fonts are not illuminated.

For a real review, check this kid video

Good thing he found the software for it https://www.aescolife.com/aHub

With all the great packaging, there is no manual/instructions to change settings of the fly.

Back to the insane amount of chips. The software to customize the keyboard is 300Mb. That is scary kind of crazy. I'm a paranoiac conspiratinist. As far as I know, this keyboard could be doing a lot more than just keyboarding. (keylogger or worse) I hope not. So I just ran an ChatGPT assessment based on the extend USB information produced by USBTreeView: Summary of the results

🚫 What You Don't Have (Good Signs)

You do NOT have:

❌ Mass Storage Interface
❌ USB Network / RNDIS / CDC ECM
❌ Audio Interface
❌ Vendor-Specific mystery interface
❌ DFU flashing interface always active
❌ Webcams or imaging device classes
❌ ACM Serial port that could act as command channel

Those are exactly the vectors attackers use to hide exfiltration.
None are present.

🛡 Risk Assessment

Based on USB descriptors alone, this device:

Almost certainly is NOT a hardware keylogger or spyware keyboard.

Gaming keyboards with macro/RGB features often show:

multiple HID interfaces

large HID report descriptors

weird naming or reused VID/PID

bloated Windows config apps

It's all consistent with a cheap Chinese ODM gaming board.

Consistent with cheap Chinese ODM gaming board.  )


But but... It was not cheap and it doesn't feel cheap.