K70R firmware quirks?

[Djhg2000]

Hi, I purchased a K70R yesterday and I have to say I'm very pleased with the responsiveness. It even passed the woodpecker test with flying colors, which isn't an easy test at all and usually reveals flaws both in the matrix polling and the debounce algorithm.

 

Now to the issues I'm experiencing. First of all, the backlight has this really intense and yet comfortable red color (never seen a backlight color this pure on a keyboard before) but it's clearly PWM controlled for the brightness.

 

The PWM frequency appears to be about 60 Hz and unfortunately that's a bit of a problem for me (I didn't notice this on the store demo keyboard, probably because of the intense surrounding lights). You see, I appear to have a fairly rare condition where 60 Hz doesn't really appear to be constantly on, but rather appear as a vague flicker when they turn off.

 

How much varies, but it's more obvious in the dark and it was the first thing I noticed when I plugged the keyboard in. I'm not sure if anything can be done to fix this, but any tips that won't void the warranty are welcome. It's not a dealbreaker, I have other things with this issue but for obvious reasons I tend avoid them.

 

Then there is the actual backlight switch itself. In Windows 7, it does nothing but toggle the backlight brightness. In Linux however (tested on my laptop running Debian Jessie as well) it emits what appears to be random key codes, usually Calculator or F5 depending on how long you press the button but I have seen other key codes which appear to do nothing a couple of times (tested with the xev utility).

 

Searching the web I found that at least one other user appears to have a similar issue and the workaround is to unmap the calculator shortcut. I have no clue if this affects everyone in Linux or if it's limited to the recent batches. Does anyone else experience this?

 

Edit:

I forgot to say I tried running the firmware updater, but it already had version 1.09 on it.

[terabyte]

Hi, I purchased a K70R yesterday and I have to say I'm very pleased with the responsiveness. It even passed the woodpecker test with flying colors, which isn't an easy test at all and usually reveals flaws both in the matrix polling and the debounce algorithm.

 

Now to the issues I'm experiencing. First of all, the backlight has this really intense and yet comfortable red color (never seen a backlight color this pure on a keyboard before) but it's clearly PWM controlled for the brightness.

 

The PWM frequency appears to be about 60 Hz and unfortunately that's a bit of a problem for me (I didn't notice this on the store demo keyboard, probably because of the intense surrounding lights). You see, I appear to have a fairly rare condition where 60 Hz doesn't really appear to be constantly on, but rather appear as a vague flicker when they turn off.

 

How much varies, but it's more obvious in the dark and it was the first thing I noticed when I plugged the keyboard in. I'm not sure if anything can be done to fix this, but any tips that won't void the warranty are welcome. It's not a dealbreaker, I have other things with this issue but for obvious reasons I tend avoid them.

 

Then there is the actual backlight switch itself. In Windows 7, it does nothing but toggle the backlight brightness. In Linux however (tested on my laptop running Debian Jessie as well) it emits what appears to be random key codes, usually Calculator or F5 depending on how long you press the button but I have seen other key codes which appear to do nothing a couple of times (tested with the xev utility).

 

Searching the web I found that at least one other user appears to have a similar issue and the workaround is to unmap the calculator shortcut. I have no clue if this affects everyone in Linux or if it's limited to the recent batches. Does anyone else experience this?

 

Edit:

I forgot to say I tried running the firmware updater, but it already had version 1.09 on it.

I believe someone else mentioned this PWM issue too.

 

But regarding the firmware version you mentioned, the last one is NOT 1.09 but 1.10 as you can see in this screenshot posted in another thread:

 

http://i.gyazo.com/266fe3eb5b0c0d60809097b5ab007574.png

[Djhg2000]

That screenshot shows K70 RGB as the selected model. I have the K70R, which is the older black version with solid red LEDs. Are the firmwares really interchangeable between these models?

[Technobeard]

There is no such model as the K70R. It sounds like you have a standard K70 with red LEDs.

 

No, the software / firmware is not interchangeable between the standard K70 and the K70 RGB.

[Djhg2000]

Well, it was referred to as K70R (as opposed to K70B which according to the tool is the blue one) in the firmware updater tool so I thought calling mine K70R would avoid confusion with the newly released K70 RGB. Turns out I was wrong.

[terabyte]

Yep my mistake too, I read K70R and went with RGB even thought it was not.