Any easy fix for an intermittant Ducky Shine 2?

[Kirfloof]

Hi folks, just new here but seemed the place to ask this.

Just received my Ducky 9087 Shine 2 this last week, with cherry blues. I've noticed I'm not always getting 100% off the B key, but it's rare enough that I had it down to my typos at first.

Investigating further the problem seems to come at random. It will work 100% for an hour, then I'll have 10 minutes or so when only about 20-30% of my taps will work. It will also more rarely chatter out a double letter.

Checking with the reactive lighting shows the LED also winking out as the connection falters. It has always clicked every time as it should. I've also tried blowing out debris that may be blocking the contacts and spamming the key without success. Changing angle of attack seems to have an effect, but an inconsistent one.

Reluctant to RMA it due to stock issues, but if I have to I have to.

Is this sort of thing likely to disappear or get worse? I'm assuming it's either a faulty switch or a minor crack in the solder.

Thanks.

[WhiteFireDragon]

Since it's just that one switch, your guess seems pretty accurate. Most likely bad contact inside the switch, or cold solder joint. Desolder and replace that one switch.

[rowdy]

+1 but bearing in mind that this will probably void your warranty.

[Masterchief79]

Indeed, you can choose between RMA'ing that thing or do the work yourself. RMA may take weeks or months whereas soldering yourself voids the warranty. It's your choice (personally I would rather send it back)

[Kirfloof]

Thanks for the quick replies, the weirdness got a bit weirder!

Thought I'd better RMA it, as I've done no soldering since my school days. Wanting to be thorough I tested it on another machine and couldn't replicate the issue. Going back to the pc I use it on, I discovered that some usb ports made the entire board non-functional. My theory now is that the B switch needs a touch more juice to activate properly, and the socket I had it on wasn't giving it enough.

Haven't been able to replicate the problem again so I'm marking this one down to usb oddities.

[TwistedMentat]

Sounds like you're right -- the keyboard is not the problem.  Note that an illuminated keyboard will require a little bit more electricity than a regular keyboard.  Some even have two USB plugs to make sure they get enough power, and the Cooler Master Trigger requires an AC adapter.  If the keyboard performs as it should on other computers, there are, in my opinion, two possibilities: you are using an underpowered USB hub, or you need a new USB controller in your PC.

Underpowered USB hubs and/or low-quality USB cables often cause intermittent failures in the devices attached to them.  This one will solve that problem.  I own one and the power output & data flow do not falter even when all ten ports are occupied (several by devices that require more than the weak current that passes through USB): two keyboards -- both illuminated, a G13 (illuminated and a small LCD screen), a G500 mouse, an F310 gamepad, a recharging Sansa Fuze, a couple USB thumb drives, and multiple external hard drive enclosures with fans.  They also have a USB 3.0 7-port hub if you need the faster speeds.

As for getting a new USB controller, that will depend on the age of the machine and whether it is a desktop or a laptop.

[jabar]

If you bought from MechKeyboards.com, they handle RMAs in house which might even mean they do the repairs... not entirely sure if that's their new setup, but either way they are working hard to make RMA turnaround time good.

[Kirfloof]

Hi folks, thanks for the advice.

Slight update.

Borrowed a powered hub, didn't solve anything, so thinking it was the host controller (the whole board was going inactive on usb 3 or sometimes typing garble) I added a new PCI hub, and that did nothing either.

It trolled me for a couple of nights by behaving perfectly until the B entirely failed a short while ago (typing this on the old MS X6).

Good news is the error is showing on my other pc's now, so it's definitely the board and RMA should go smoothly.

Not going to fix it myself, the whole board going dead under some conditions makes me think the firmware is maybe bad in some way.


No replacements in stock (I'm in the UK, sourcing these things seems hard here), so I might be looking elsewhere, unless I want a black or red keyset but half the reason I went mech was for the noise and feedback 

[IPT]

U can also try a different USB cable. I know I had similar problems that you had, I swapped the USB cable and it went away