My experience with the teensy so far has been overwhelmingly positive. No waiting 8 seconds for it to get out of bootloader mode, no tricky messing around with the Arduino IDE to get it to work, it uses the Arduino keyboard libraries instead of the not-so-well-written trinket ones, uploading and debugging is incredibly easy, and there's a lot of added functionality (that will take a lot more work to take advantage of). I still don't think this is viable to replace the trinket since it costs more than twice as much, and realistically the trinket does all we need it to minus the polling rate. I'm still thinking about offering it as a premium option...
chainpullz wrote:
Price seems a little steep but I don't have a good sense of the keyboard market right now. I personally don't think I could justify more than $20 and that's only if things like polling rate and such are the same as an actual keyboard in a practical sense.
The keyboard I'm using right now cost about $100, has a numpad, a handful of useful function keys, different lighting modes, and functions as an actual keyboard among other things. If we completely overlook all of the extra functionality and look at components, there are way more than 4x as many switches. Add to that the insurance of it coming from a highly reputable brand (ofc they do bulk so this does also help some with costs I realize).
Also, I'm pretty sure you can get a whole numpad for around $30.
First off, I'd like to say that I'm not trying to run a business. I'm basing my prices on cost and labor, not on what else is on the market. These are just something I'm making for fun and my impetus for making them is based on my desire for them to be available a few months ago. I'm aware of my skill level, and if I was told about the polling rate I probably wouldn't have cared if there was nothing else available. At the very least, I've been transparent about it with you guys, and if you wanted to make something yourself, you now know you'd run into that wall with the trinket.
Secondly, my keyboard cost me ~$260 total for the keyboard itself, doubleshot dsa keycaps, and detachable cable mod. This was mainly for a nice typing experience and durability. Brown keyswitches aren't really the best for osu though, and even though I play a lot of cs:go and ffxiv, I'm more afraid of my z and x keys wearing out than my wasd or 1234 with the way I smash them
A mechanical numpad would have been a solid option for me if I'd thought about it or read through the threads, but I still think there's a cool novelty to having a dedicated piece of hardware for osu. You can also throw custom keycaps on it without spending a crazy amount of money on a whole set for a numpad, or having two keys look awkward and alone.
Manufacturing defects are more common than you'd think, and many companies put the minimum amount of effort into QC and testing. I've been testing each of these for about a day of playing to make sure everything's working perfectly. The only thing you really get from a big company is a well-documented warranty. If someone told me that they had a problem, I would definitely cover shipping at least one way depending on the circumstances and location and repair/replace it. I have a pretty solid track record that you can check out
here.
Yes, bulk orders would help immensely with costs and thus prices as well. If I didn't have to cut the plastic housing by hand with a dremel and a craft knife, the price would definitely be lower.
As far as I know, the cheapest mechanical numpad goes for $45. If you find something as low as $30 feel free to post it in the tread for anyone interested in that instead.