Ducky exclusive patented tech - Adjusting Repeat Delay Time and Repeat Rate USB?

[VesperSAINT]

Anyone care to explain? I can't read Chinese and this is from Ducky's Facebook page:

[Computex 2013]

Here comes the Ducky new exclusive patented technology ! Adjusting Repeat Delay Time and Repeat Rate over USB for gaming !

Ducky 即將推出獨家新技術專利！在USB介面上可以調整Repeat Delay time以及Repeat Rate，對於電競來說更為實用 !

[nubbinator]

Well repeat delay is how long after you press and hold down the key before it starts repeating the action that pressing that key does (for example, the amount of time before pressing space bar before it goes from a single space to a ton of spaces).  The repeat rate is how quickly that key is repeated.  It sounds like they may have just moved the control for that from the OS to the keyboard controller.  Not really sure how that fits into gaming though.

[VesperSAINT]

Thanks for the explanation! Now I know what it does but now I need to know how this is practical in gaming or just everyday typing. Maybe they'll explain it in the near future.

[mich]

It sounds like they may have just moved the control for that from the OS to the keyboard controller.

It sounds like they'll tell you to install some "driver" which really is a program monitoring these hotkeys and adjusting OS settings. USB isn't designed for hardware-based repetition and doing it anyway would require the keyboard to repeatedly pretend that the key has been released and pressed again - something that would interact unpredictably with OS repetition and break any games which wait for some key to be pressed for some specified time.

Not really sure how that fits into gaming though.

It doesn't. If games cared about repetition, you could make your character outrun others by increasing repetition rate. Pro hint: it isn't worth trying, I haven't seen such game in a long time.
What games care about are key-down and key-up events, which BTW would get messed if they really tried to do hardware repetition on USB.

It's a rather pointless gimmick.

[Q404]

Sounds alot like this RTR technology on the zowie.

[tp4tissue]

doesn't seem terribly useful, but then what do I know, I just play video games.

[SpAmRaY]

Am I the only one to find it strange that they somehow 'patented' this technology? Can this not be already adjusted in the OS??

[laffindude]

USB hardware adjustable repeat rate is something new.

[Photoelectric]

My guess is that it could be something on-line MMO players would want to queue abilities that require a cast time and are dependent on server-client latency.  AutoHotKey was popular for macroing, say, "3" to do something like "3333".