deskthority

I have seen a couple news items from Taiwanese manufacturer Adomax's booth at the ongoing Computex fair in Taipei.

They have developed a new keyboard switch with optical sensing, called the Flaretech Switch. They claim that their patented (?) optical sensing mechanism will not allow faster response time and longer life than metal-contact mechanical switches but also allow analog sensing or configurable activation point like recent Topre keyboards.
All electronics is surface-mounted on the underlying PCB with the actual switch modules containing no electronics - and this is supposed to make it easier for the manufacturer to build keyboards and lead to fewer returns.

The switch stem is Cherry MX-compatible. It is also transparent, so you could guess that it is an optical lens for the sensing mechanism.
They have announced four types - that they call "weights" - indicated by differently coloured top housings: Black, Red, Blue and Brown. They have only shown Black switches in Taipei, though.

The switch allows backlighting, not through an integrated LED or through the stem but through a separate light guide at a position near where a LED on Cherry MX switch would be. The light guide is surrounded by opaque plastic - thus avoiding light bleed. (Finally!)

So far, Adomax has only their own prototype keyboards to show. There has not been any announcement of keyboards with these switches from any manufacturer.
The prototype keyboards shown have plate holes for Cherry-style stabilisers.

English news site:
http://www.custompcreview.com/news/comp ... ing/24510/

Chinese news site:
http://www.wtoutiao.com/p/ff4sig.html

Post on overclock.net.

Nothing on Adomax's own web site yet...

Analog switches are upon us!

Some interesting stuff in the English news link. According to them these switches are easily removed from the plate. Nice. And their description sounds like the transparent stem is the light pipe for cap illumination.

We need some detailed pics.

Muirium wrote: And their description sounds like the transparent stem is the light pipe for cap illumination.

If you zoom in on pictures you will see that the article is incorrect about that: the light is coming out a separate pipe which is on top and a little bit to the right. There is a picture of a PCB: sadly without components, but it shows that there are pads at that position and holes under the stems like with Cherry MX.
The keycaps used are just like backlit keycaps for Cherry MX, with the legend up top.

Neat! Seems this switch has enough unique things going for it to make it a compelling choice for the big players. I can imagine that they all want to be first to boast about 100 million actuations and IR sensor

This will be the next office prank - annoy your colleagues by reconfiguring their keyboard so every key needs to be bottomed out

Very interesting. Of course the feel of their switches remains to be "felt". And will the price be right?

Nice, IR sensors work pretty good on the Datahand, maybe even better here in inclosed modules (dust and cat hair are the enemies of the Datahand). Extremely simple yet very accurate, who needs hall-effect? The interesting part will be their tactility. The disadvantage of vertical leaf switches is the scraping, but it also provides the tactility. All the hall-effect keyboards I've tried are "random-ass linear", just pushing down a spring. The Datahand does better with magnets, but cannot really be compared at 20g activation.

Video is up:

Bloody ("A4Tech") also showed a keyboard with infrared switches at Computex. Also Cherry MX keycap compatible, more light bleed. They are apparently different, using an opaque slider for blocking an IR beam, so no analogue sensing.

Cheesy but informative and to the point product video: At Computex, in Bloody's booth they had one of their keyboards and supposedly a Cherry MX-board 6.0 side by side with a bar between-them so that they could press keys simultaneously ...
Now... if the actuation point is higher on one keyboard or you would press on a point on the bar closer to it, you would still get faster "response time".
https://youtu.be/rc1mNuOc2I4?t=43m39s