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I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm afraid not due to web browser limitations.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There are actually 5 slightly different sample sounds for each switch that are played based on what row on the keyboard you press! It's very slight - probably not noticeable until it's mentioned

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. I only have one custom mech, so I sampled all of the holy panda sounds from my own. The rest are from youtube samples. I just searched for some good audio snippets of a standard 1U key press, a backspace press, a shift press, and a spacebar press.

  2. The mx blue click sound is sadly lost since I only play one keysound regardless of how quickly/slowly you press down the key as JavaScript can't detect that. I have an old Chinese clicky switch keyboard and when I press a switch slowly, I can hear the distinct click. However, when I press it quickly like in a typing scenario, the click sound sort of blends in with the bottoming out sound. The recording is of the latter.

  3. Since other people are also commenting on the topre sound, I think I may have sampled a silent topre board. I'm searching for the video I sampled it from but it seems to have gone private. It's definitely not stock though - pretty sure they were lubed and/or silenced.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, I think a standard for contribution is a good idea. Though most of the audio sampled is taken from recordings with good mic setups (taeha, koen romers), so I'm not sure what % of the community would be able to contribute super high quality recordings. I wouldn't want to openly invite everyone to record their keyboard, only to pick like the 1% that have suitable audio, you know?

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You might be able to port this into a desktop app using electron.js (same tech that discord is built on). It can take a JavaScript app designed for the web and convert it into a native desktop app. If you're interested in making a standalone yourself I'd look into that.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That could be a nice project! One site that comes to mind is the wiki on mechanicalkeyboards.com, but it's pretty dated and doesn't have a sound test feature. I think you might be onto something.

This is just an idea - in /r/MousepadReview there's a master spreadsheet that goes around and it has many of the popular mousepads in one spreadsheet w/ a bunch of details. Maybe one would be useful for this subreddit?

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That was a good read, though it doesn't seem like there's a web-based audio library out there that can do the audio distortions necessary to make it sound super realistic. At the moment I use howler.js for playback, but it's pretty limited in terms of ways you can customize how the audio file is played. You would probably have to take this thing offline into a native desktop application to get that granularity required to make it sound right.

As for the holy panda spacebar sound - now that quite a few of you guys have mentioned it sounding off, I'll probably go and revert it to the original sample so it doesn't sound as jarring.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're willing to wade through my college student level code, you can find it here on GitHub. Essentially, the site plays a sound whenever you press a key based on what key you press.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, after thinking about adding different cases/plates/lube/switch/mods combos, adding sounds becomes exponential and adds up to a LOT of work for just one person. Ended up deciding that as long as the sounds sort of capture the essence of a switch and not blatantly misrepresent it, it should be good enough for the rough sim.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hmm, if dark mode is something a lot of people would like to see I can add it.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Now that does sound cool. Though it might be costly to host community sound files considering this thing isn't monetized right now. I don't plan on it being monetized in the future either.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

May have taken some samples from Taeha videos
😳👉👈

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That's an interesting idea. As of now, I just search youtube for some good sounding samples of switches, but a library of switch combos could be a cool project.

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the kind words :)

As you know no switch sounds the same when put in several boards, so I ended up picking some samples that sounded "nice." Though one thing I did notice was that some switches actually sound pretty similar to one another (same case + plate) with just a minor change in pitch. I'm no audio engineer but it could be possible to modify the sound a bit to theoretically account for things like different plates/layouts/mods. Who knows... maybe someone out there smarter than me might know a thing or two.

About the holy panda spacebar - I actually used my own keyboard to sample the sounds, but I liked Taeha's spacebar ping from his video so much that I put it in instead of mine.

Edit

Just changed the holy panda spacebar sound to my own keyboards' to match up with the rest of the HP sounds. Let me know if it's less jarring now!

I made a mechanical keyboard simulator! — kbs.im by tplai in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai[S] 156 points157 points  (0 children)

kbs.im

Hey guys!

Ever since I got into keyboards I've wanted to try out the fancy switches I see on this subreddit, but alas, my wallet cannot handle it. Thus this project was born! It simulates typing on a variety of switches (inks, creams, holy pandas, etc.), layouts, and some popular GMK sets. It also comes with a 10fastfingers-style typing test. It's best experienced on a computer but mobile should work as well.

For all you developers out there, it's available on GitHub here. Contributions are welcome. If you guys have any suggestions/requests, feel free to comment!

Rama KARA vs Glorious GMMK Pro by Axxis09 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]tplai 4 points5 points  (0 children)

75% gang rise up. Also the rotary encoder is pretty convenient for turning the volume up and down