Analogue keyboard specialist Wooting has announced a plan to bring its technology to a wider audience with the release of Cherry MX-compatible analogue switches dubbed Lekker.
Traditional keyboards are digital: Either a key is active, or it isn't. For typing, that's exactly what you want; for gaming, the analogue control offered by a gamepad allows for finer-grained control for everything from steering to character movement. Wooting was one of the first companies to attempt to merge the two together, launching an analogue keyboard on crowdfunding site Kickstarter that could understand analogue - rather than digital - inputs across all keys.
The original Wooting One keyboard, and its successor the Wooting Two, were both based on an infrared switch technology dubbed Flaretech. The company's latest announcement, though, switches light for magnetism with a hall-effect switch the company has dubbed Lekker.
Designed to be sold alongside the company's Flaretech switches, Lekker offers a trade-off: Flaretech, the company claims, is smoother, has a faster response time, and is easier to hot-swap on a board; the Lekker switches, meanwhile, offer a wider range of analogue movement for finer-grained control.
The switch design, which is not yet in mass production, is a linear silent type with a 65cN force to the end point of its travel. Rated to a claimed 100 million actuations, the switch travels 4mm with analogue actuation starting at 0.1mm of travel and ending at 3.8mm, is designed to be plate-mounted, and has a keycap stem compatible with caps designed for Cherry's popular MX family of switches.
The Lekker, however, isn't quite ready for prime time. The company has confirmed that 'it won't be coming out in a day or a month,' and that it will announce more on the project at Computex. More details are available on the official website.
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