Keychron announces first open-source firmware for gaming mice

A bit ago I accidentally bought a Keychron keyboard that didn't have QMK support, but then found that someone had ported it anyway, and I was able to flash it and fix some problems I had (the main one being that it seems like the default firmware only scans a single row of keys while asleep, possibly to save energy, but I want any keypress to wake the computer.) Maybe it's not perfect, but the community around open source keyboard firmware is great, it's a good example of how open source is beneficial for end users, especially power users.

And, in an era where vendor software and firmware for all kinds of devices is constantly having vulnerabilities, it is possible the liability of doing custom shit will eventually outweigh whatever benefits hardware companies seem to think it has, versus just having industry standards and free software instead. But, maybe that is wishful thinking.

My only complaint with Keychron is that of 5 or so keyboards I've owned from them I wound up having to resolder 3 different hotswap sockets on 2 different keyboards right out of the box. That is... Not a fantastic failure rate. OTOH, they are otherwise an unambiguously great value, with materials and build quality that feels pretty impressive for the cost, QC issues notwithstanding.

Hmm, I have a mouse and trackballs from ploopy, they run QMK, so why was a new project needed? What is the added value?

To me, the missing feature in the QMK ecosystem is a devices too device communication channel. For now there is only caps lock & others: it would be nice to activate a mouse layer (for instance: increase DPI) to a keyboard key.

It is probably solvable if a heavyweight was to push for new HID descriptors or something similar.

Announces != releases.

They claim 2027 Q1 will be the release date.

Links below purporting to be “the repository” lead to a repo with no source code.

Sorry, I’m cynical. An announcement 6-9 months ahead of release? Why? Right now it’s vaporware.

This would be more exciting if Keychron had mice of more interesting / experimental form factors and functionality. Just like their keyboards, their mice are mostly differentiated by obscure technical features (polling rates!).

I'm a bit worried that a decent, modern replacement for the extremely obsolete multi-button mouse I have now (Logitech G602) will never be available.

For those that are interested: - https://github.com/Keychron/zgm - https://zgm.gg/

Cool, I like Keychron products, but can people really not even write a single tweet without using AI to speak for them now?

Hopefully better than their QMK fork. They force push over their branch in their fork each new release effectively erasing history of the last version...

Of course there's no change log anywhere either...

I bought a Q6 wired keyboard. Most solid keyboard I've ever owned.

Only problem is the backlight didn't actually light up the keys.

It wasn't fixable. first, the keys that came with the keyboard were opaque. And after the arduous task of replacing the keys with shine-through keycaps -- all the LEDs were positioned below the keystem instead of above, so the lettering wasn't illuminated.

I would have loved to use that keyboard. Switched to steelseries apex pro.

I really wanted to like Keychron, but after spending 200$ on one of their high end keyboards, certain keys weren't detecting presses less than a month later. I couldn't end up fixing it so I tossed it out. Felt like a waste

Hmm that opens up a way for cheating in games - have a Screengraber and image processing running directly communicate with mouse and let it calculate the distance to region of interest internally and then give out delta position. For the system, it looks like the mouse has been moved very fast and far

I’ve had positive experiences with Keychron products in the past, but I’ve moved past them as I now prefer orthogonal layouts. That said, I loved their support of QMK on my Q1 Pro and I really hope this ends up on that same level.

I stumbled upon this brand when I was looking for a hall effect QMK keyboard.

Glad to see them introducing this - I might make a purchase as while my current mouse is great, I can't customise it because the associated bloatware runs only on Windows.

Never have I thought "I want a mouse with modifiable firmware", IMHO this is only going to lead to more bugs arising from the associated increase in complexity and the "we can always fix it later" mentality. All the mouses and keyboards I've used have a mask-programmed MCU, and essentially no bugs to speak of.

This is going to be used for cheating / hacking in games.

Very interesting. I've been eyeballing a mouse/trackball project for a while based on some of the open source designs like Ploopy and the like. Slap a Nordic chip on it and a joycon battery. Even better if you can cook up a wireless charging mousepad like Logitech offers!

I hope this leads to macro programmable mice, the only brand I know of that saves macros on board and supports while loops is A4tech

Keychron announces it has too much time on its hands while never being Datahand.

I suspect that a lot of hardware will start shipping open source firmware soon. Routers, IP cameras, etc.

It'll be a selling point for everyone tinkering with vibe coding, and it's no longer a moat.

Companies that don't do this will have their firmwares dumped with open source models and tools. Companies that do this will have community goodwill and extra distribution that comes from having people talking about your product.

I still wait for someone to beat logitech m500 (released 2009) in ergonomics.

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Keychrone mice are already pretty nice, this is a welcome improvement