Drop Mech Keys Meetup Recap - Thanks for Visiting!
As you may have seen, we just hosted our first meetup in quite a while here at Drop HQ (Corsair HQ, but they seem to like us enough :) )! It was a blast to get to meet so many enthusiasts local to the bay area—it had been 10 years since I was last hanging out with keyboard nerds in the bay, at KeyCon 2014. We had a great time hosting everyone at the offices, checking out all the very nice boards y'all brought, and sharing some of our own projects/spaces! I knew it would be fun to host in the Game Room when I first saw it in person, but seeing it come to fruition was still so cool. Alright, I'll stop blabbering on now. xD Picture time! (Oh, real quick - there will be more of these! Stay tuned for more info and to catch the next one!)
May 15, 2024
The "oblong" holes for the key switches I assumed were for multi-switch compatibility, and I had no issues soldering it together--even though I am VERY amateur at soldering. I have ZERO skills for surface-mount and have only done some basic AC adapter repairs on laptops.
I do suggest if you got Matias switches to plate mount all of your switches, including your stabilizers, before soldering. The signature plastics keycaps are a tight fit and do not come off easy. They are such a tight fit I haven't risked removing one since I finished the keyboard.
I can't speak to the assembly guide documentation, because honestly I didn't use any of it. I felt most of the process was a self-explanatory. The most challenging part I ran into was how to assemble the stabilizers; I did have to disassemble them more than once before I got a reliably smooth result, but they do work, and are not significantly noisier than the rest of the keyboard (not even the space bar.) I can imagine if I had waited on the stabilizers for after soldering I may have had a worse result.
Programming using the web interface worked well enough for me. Using the command-line tools in OS X to flash the board is very simple once you have the right tools installed from Homebrew.
I would absolutely do this drop again. My total cost was comparible to the retail price of my other 60% keyboard--the TEX Beetle. And while the TEX included a 90-degree USB cable (that I now use on my Infinity), a superior overall "finished" product feel, and a preferred bottom row (dedicated arrow keys, smaller space bar so fn-keys are easily thumb-activated), my custom layout and feel of the Infinity win every day. In fact, now my O-ringed MX browns feel like mush.
So thank you for making an awesome keyboard available to the enthusiasts out there :)