I wasn’t happy with the force needed for the keyboard. Measuring the force required, it was close to 500g. When I disassembled the keyboard, the dome switches themselves were about the 100g as expected. Not really being happy with that, I decided that maybe putting something that provides a bump on the dome cap itself would help. Looking around my office, I needed something small. I have a bunch of 0805 resistors, so I used double sided sticky tape to put one on the top of the dome. That was too big. I switched it down to an 0603 and I think I like the keyboard much better. To do this, I cut tiny squares of double sided tape about 3mm on a side. I placed on top of that an 0603 resistor. They measure about 0.4mm thick but it is also the size that is important.
Nice! Also, this experiment could be improved with a video showing a before and after the measurements and the sound they make, would this be possible?
It is actually much quieter and the keys don’t press down even less than they did before. I have it back together at this point. Still takes around 250g force. I used a set of weights and just put them on the keys, but I do like it much better than before.
Thinking about it, if I have problems and open it again, will try just regular tape and tape the parts down. I did have an issue with some of the keys sticking, but just pressing firmly and releasing seems to clear that up. Not sure a video would show much. Too many other things need to be done. Still fighting several unrelated issues with the R-01 processor.
I really do like the form factor for the uConsole, will eventually switch to the CM4 as I work with the Pi environment much more than anything else.
again - thanks to the contributors to this forum - I’m waiting on my A-06 version to ship so those of you that have already received your units are finding issues and pointing out short comings. I hope to be able to thumb type with the unit that is my hope. The Devterm keyboard is fine for some but I found the keys to large to thumb type and to small to touch type - I use an external keyboard…