For my cash, you merely can’t get a greater electrocapacitive keyboard than the Bauer Lite with a DynaCap kit.
You can get a nicer EC keyboard, with out having to construct it your self, by merely spending $3,600 on a Norbauer Seneca. Or you may get a Happy Hacking Keyboard or a Realforce for south of $300, additionally with out having to construct it your self, with real Topre switches, Bluetooth in order for you it, and first rate — however not nice — remapping functionality.
Or, for about $250, a set of keycaps, and a few hours of meeting, you may design a Bauer Lite in any of a zillion coloration combos and use DynaCap elements to show it into a totally remappable EC keyboard that appears like Topre whereas nonetheless being appropriate with the huge world of aftermarket keycaps. Doesn’t that sound good?
$136
A 65 % gasket-mounted wired mechanical keyboard kit. Use the Design Lab to customise its high, backside, switchplate, and accent colours, plate supplies, and mechanical or electrocapacitive PCBs. (Switches, stabilizers, and keycaps bought individually)
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$122
A bundle of elements to transform a mechanical keyboard into an electrocapacitive one. Use a 60/65% bundle with a 7u area bar for a Bauer Lite you’ve configured with a Dynacap plate and EC65X PCB, or the DynaPak, which incorporates the plate and PCB, if you’re changing one you already personal.
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DynaCap is a system of third-party, Topre-compatible elements from Clever Keebs that make it (comparatively) simple and (comparatively) low cost to create new electrocapacitive keyboards, convert an present mechanical keyboard to EC, or modify a Topre board to make use of commonplace keycaps. The full DynaCap stack consists of sliders, housings, stabilizers, domes, springs, silencing rings, and plate gaskets (required provided that you’re changing a Topre board). All you want is a appropriate PCB and swap plate to show any mechanical keyboard into an electrocapacitive one which works with MX keycaps.
Stop me for those who’ve heard this half earlier than. Topre keyboards rule as a result of their electrocapacitive switches give them an unmatched, top-heavy tactile bump that you may’t get wherever else. Unfortunately, there are solely a handful of precise Topre keyboards nonetheless in manufacturing, in solely 4 layouts: full-size, TKL, a brand new nonstandard 75 % board, and the Happy Hacking Keyboard. And apart from a few okayish Realforce gaming keyboards, they’re not appropriate with the MX mount type utilized by just about each keycap set ever. This is a giant drawback for a small variety of folks, and a few of them have tried to repair it.
It’s not so simple as simply swapping the sliders from Topre to MX. MX-compatible keycaps are designed to suit over Cherry-MX-style housings; for those who use MX sliders on Topre housings, some keycap profiles on some rows will bang into the housings on the best way down. Both Ryan Norbauer and Clever additionally redesigned their swap housings to accommodate. Norbauer’s are radically completely different to the purpose the place they’re incompatible with Topre switchplates, however that’s moot as a result of you may solely get them on a Norbauer board. See above re: $3,600.
DynaCap elements, however, can be found à la carte and are intercompatible with Topre elements. DynaCap sliders match into Topre housings and vice versa; DynaCap domes and comes work with Topre boards and vice versa. If you simply wish to make a Topre board work with MX keycaps, you solely want the sliders, silencing rings (optionally available), housing gaskets, and housings (until you’re changing a board with an built-in switchplate).
Some meeting required. Image: DynaCap
But the true magic comes from having the complete stack. Paired with a PCB and switchplate, you should utilize DynaCap to show a keyboard designed for MX switches into one which’s very very similar to a Topre board, and even higher in some methods. DynaCap is working with keyboard distributors to promote DynaPaks — kits that embody all of the elements wanted to transform your keyboard — and a number of other upcoming keyboard group buys embody DynaCap choices.
The DynaCap system is designed by Clever Keebs, and manufactured and bought by Omnitype, and one of many first DynaPaks out there is for Omnitype’s Bauer Lite keyboard. This is extremely handy for me. I personal a Bauer Lite. I like the Bauer Lite. It’s a 65 % keyboard kit with a ton of various translucent coloration combos and a format that mixes the perfect options of the Happy Hacking Keyboard and my beloved and now-discontinued Leopold FC660C: cut up backspace and arrow keys. And now, with DynaCap, it might probably additionally really feel like these two Topre keyboards.
If you don’t have already got a Bauer Lite, you may configure one with a DynaCap plate and PCB within the design lab for $135.99 and up, relying on different choices, then add the $121.50 60/65% DynaCap bundle for the remainder of the elements (make sure to choose the 7u stabilizer wire choice). If you have already got a Bauer Lite, you may get a full conversion kit with plate and PCB for just below $200, which is what I did.
Converting my Bauer Lite to DynaCap wasn’t sophisticated, although it was a bit tedious. I unscrewed the 4 screws on the backside of the housing, eliminated the highest housing, disconnected the JST cable, and the entire plate, PCB, swap, and keycap sandwich got here out in a single piece.
This is from the DynaCap web site as a result of the photographs I took didn’t prove. Imagine this however in worse lighting. Image: DynaCap
The domes need to be fastidiously aligned over the sliders. Image: DynaCap
The gold springs don’t require lube. I received the stainless-steel ones and needed to shake them in a bag with Krytox 105g0 oil. Worth it, however I ought to have simply gotten the gold ones. Image: DynaCap
Then it was a easy matter of snapping the swap housings into the DynaCap plate, including silencing rings to every slider, lubing the slider rails on every housing with one sort of lubricant, utilizing a thicker lubricant on the stabilizer wire housings and clips, dropping the sliders into the housings, laying the domes on the sliders, placing the springs in a bag with just a few drops of oil and shaking it up (you may skip this half for those who get the gold-coated springs), decanting the hopeless tangle of springs from the bag into a field and shaking that till sufficient springs indifferent from the mass, laying the springs into the undersides of the domes one after the other, fastidiously inserting the PCB over the entire meeting, and securing it with a number of dozen screws to make sure even stress. Then I put the entire thing upside-down into the highest housing, reattached the daughterboard cable, hooked up the underside housing, and changed these 4 screws. After that, all I needed to do was set up some keycaps, join the keyboard to a pc, open Via, calibrate every swap by bottoming it out, apply my most popular key map, and tweak the RGB underlighting (clearly).
1/9My Bauer Lite pre-conversion, with a tangerine high housing.
If you haven’t constructed a keyboard earlier than, you would possibly ask your self: Why hassle with all that? Great query. It’s extra effort than I put into my mechanical keyboard builds; there, I just about simply lube the stabilizers and name it a day. But it’s not a lot extra effort. Lubing electrocapacitive swap sliders is less complicated than cracking open mechanical switches.
But right here’s why: I’ve been utilizing mechanical keyboards since 2009, and I’ve had a Topre electrocapacitive keyboard since 2017. I’ve spent quite a lot of that point looking for switches that may make my mechanical boards really feel extra like Topre; I purchased a third-party controller for my Topre board to make it remappable like a mechanical board.
DynaCap isn’t Topre. The medium-weight DynaCap domes in my Bauer Lite really feel only a contact lighter than the 45g Topre domes in a brand new HHKB evaluation unit, and considerably lighter than the eight-year-old domes in my Leopold board. I don’t have that $3,600 Seneca evaluation unit anymore, so I can’t examine that. But I don’t want DynaCap to be Topre; I’ve a Topre board for that.
DynaCap brings the great feeling of oneness with cup rubber to my favorite non-Topre keyboard, and that’s precisely what I needed.
Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge besides the place famous.
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