[EXPERIMENT]Keyboard latency at different debounce settings

[s34mh1]

Interesting results, I've owned and sent back some time ago a Razor huntsman elite - optical buttons, I found surprisingly there was a debounce delay and even more surprisingly key chatter when you held the key just on the actuation point, I'd guess because the light level wasn't fully on or fully off.

So their claim to be fast to me didn't stack up at all, wasn't any better than a standard mechanical switch, maybe worse with the button chatter, perhaps they've fixed that now ? I don't know.

I've recently bought a Fnatic keyboard with cherry browns, it's definitely responsive, from the below link I've managed to get a key press down to 3ms. Their claim for no BS gaming gear seems fair, I like their gear, same for their mouse, one of be best mice I've ever used (currently I'm using a Razor death adder v2).

http://blog.seethis.link/scan-rate-estimator/

The keyboard I'm really interested in testing and / or buying is the Steel series Apex pro, I wonder if this could be any better / faster than my Fnatic board, it's not cheap.

https://steelseries.com/gaming-keyboards/apex-pro-tkl

There is also a crazyboard keyboard on the market. They use a 3000 Hz matrix scan rate.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Canadian made a keyboard-to-photon latency tester:

https://thume.ca/2020/05/20/making-a-latency-tester/

[MegaWatt]

An interesting project, the idea I have at the moment is to use a PCI parallel printer card as an input device instead of an expensive GPIO card, use one of the input pins on the parallel card to detect when 2 wires are shorted out. Put the 2 wires on top of key cap and use a ball bearing or some other conductive plunger to drop on the keyboard button.
The software will be simple and more relevant because it'll be running on a PC and using whatever software a keyboard vendor might need / use. All the software will need to do will be to start timing when the 2 wires short and wait for the key press to be detected, no special firmware or external microprocessors or having to hack keyboards apart, plus easily adopted for mouse buttons as well.

Reading the parallel port will most likely need to the inpout32 library, that's about as far as I've got i.e. I need to motivate myself to actually implementing it

[LordGurciullo]

My razer huntsman elite te won't go below 22ms similiar to the logitech. Maybe they did this to prevent chatter??

I have a steelseries apex pro tkl and it feels way faster than the razer but people are arguing "response time / debounce is better on the razer" I think what they are percieving is the actual spring mechanism being springier creating a different feel...

As of all the testing I've ever done on a gaming keyboard I have to say the steelseries apex pro tkl is the fastest most responsive gaming keyboard on earth...

But I'd love to see some concrete scientific evidence to show people.

[deama]

just tested the Bloody B930 at around 11ms
My test isn't accurate enough to find the winner between the logitech G pro and B930 but the linear switches on the B930 are a big step up from the Romer-G's. They are really smooth and light which might make the B930 feel faster even though the object latency is around the same

Was that at 1000hz or 500hz? I've got a B975 and by default it's at 500hz, however I can enable "gamer" mode which puts it to 1000hz, sadly for some reason the windows key doesn't work anymore.

[MegaWatt]

"
for some reason the windows key doesn't work anymore.
"

That's a normal feature for a gaming keyboard in gaming mode, most have it, the reason is that typically you'll be using the left control for something such as crouch / duck which is right next to the windows key. If you catch the windows key with your finger typically you'll end up on the desktop and be a sitting duck in whatever game you're playing. My fnatic mini streak has it but they call it competition mode.

This is the thing with keyboards, you've got the electronics side and the mechanical side, actuation point and how fast the key comes up past the actuation point might play a part - speed of the spring and mechanics of the button / friction etc. Even at 22ms you'd have to press the key 45 times in 1 second the reach the limits of the keyboard, I doubt anyone can do that. Although if the 22ms is the time the keyboard firmware / electronics waits to register a button press then I'd say you've got a detectable delay or a delay potentially putting you at a slight disadvantage. I don't know but I would expect the debounce to be added on the release of a button, although it's still odd that an optical button needs any deboune delay, I guess that comes down to what light level the electronics is triggering a button push.
If I remember the marketing at the time, may be this is still the case, Razer was claiming some insane button speeds compared to traditional cherry mechanical switches.

From all the details I've read about the Apex Pro I'm reasonably confident this is going to perform as good and most likely better than any other keyboard.

[deama]

"
for some reason the windows key doesn't work anymore.
"

That's a normal feature for a gaming keyboard in gaming mode, most have it, the reason is that typically you'll be using the left control for something such as crouch / duck which is right next to the windows key. If you catch the windows key with your finger typically you'll end up on the desktop and be a sitting duck in whatever game you're playing. My fnatic mini streak has it but they call it competition mode.

This is the thing with keyboards, you've got the electronics side and the mechanical side, actuation point and how fast the key comes up past the actuation point might play a part - speed of the spring and mechanics of the button / friction etc. Even at 22ms you'd have to press the key 45 times in 1 second the reach the limits of the keyboard, I doubt anyone can do that. Although if the 22ms is the time the keyboard firmware / electronics waits to register a button press then I'd say you've got a detectable delay or a delay potentially putting you at a slight disadvantage. I don't know but I would expect the debounce to be added on the release of a button, although it's still odd that an optical button needs any deboune delay, I guess that comes down to what light level the electronics is triggering a button push.
If I remember the marketing at the time, may be this is still the case, Razer was claiming some insane button speeds compared to traditional cherry mechanical switches.

From all the details I've read about the Apex Pro I'm reasonably confident this is going to perform as good and most likely better than any other keyboard.

Is there any way to enable windows key whilst keeping the keyboard at 1000hz? Actually, is it even worth it to keep it at 1000hz instead of 500hz?

[MegaWatt]

If not having the windows key bothers you then I'd settle for 500Hz, if it was me I'd run at 1000Hz seeing as any potential latency bothers me, although I doubt you'd feel any difference between 500 and 1000, I've tried both speeds on my mouse and I can't detect any difference.

Have you tried gaming mode and pressing left alt and tab to get to the desktop ? I have a couple of games that can be tricky to drop back to the desktop and that what I use to get around it.

I just checked the Razer website and they appear to have removed the insane response times and they claim 'zero debounce delay' which I think is a bit risky but might be the case as you push a button but probably not as you release a button. Although thinking about it which ever side you add a debounce delay to i.e. as you push a button or as you release a button you got a potential problem. If you add a debounce delay as you release a button you still might end up with 10+ms of a gaming action happening beyond the actuation point. I'd really like to know the answers to all this stuff.

I sent my huntsman back a long time ago after I realized it wasn't that good, if I still had one I might be motivated to investigate just to expose the marketing BS.

[deama]

If not having the windows key bothers you then I'd settle for 500Hz, if it was me I'd run at 1000Hz seeing as any potential latency bothers me, although I doubt you'd feel any difference between 500 and 1000, I've tried both speeds on my mouse and I can't detect any difference.

Have you tried gaming mode and pressing left alt and tab to get to the desktop ? I have a couple of games that can be tricky to drop back to the desktop and that what I use to get around it.

I use the windows key quite a lot, not just as a shortcut to show my desktop, so not having it on isn't an option.
I'd like to optimise latency as much as possible, and was wondering if I can keep the 1000hz with the windows key functionality, but I guess I'll have to settle with 500hz.
Any idea how much of a difference that would make? I mean, I know that it's about a 1ms difference right? But if you go through the entire chain, can that end up being 5ms or something like that?

[MegaWatt]

Yes at 1000hz you've got 1ms latency at 500hz you're at 2ms latency but if you've got a debounce delay of 10ms or 20ms - whatever it is, the polling rate is only a small delay in the overall chain. As I've said it depends when the debounce delay is added, I don't know the answer to that question.
The biggest delay is your reaction time which will be around 200ms but you could argue with such a large delay to visual stimulus you need every bit of help possible.

I like the idea of minimal travel keys and light touch keys, what I found with cherry reds was I was constantly accidentally pressing buttons, I'm used to cherry browns. That's where the Apex pro is going to win with the adjustable actuation point, I could perhaps keep moving this up bit by bit until I'm at the limit where the travel distance is reduced and I don't keep hitting buttons accidentally.

I'm surprised Razer is doing this i.e. not offering 1000Hz on it's own, all the gaming boards I've had you enable gaming mode with a key combo or a separate button. You might be able to use AutoHotkey to map a different button to the windows button, all depending on how Razer is blocking this, I guess it's likely Razer is blocking it from the keyboard itself, so it's likely AutoHotKey would work. Then again you're putting more software in the chain of key processing, no idea if that will add some latency ?