Every Wireless Keyboard is a Liar… but the Fix Costs $2

[Cantankerous Allay]

I have a RK G68 wireless keyboard and I get around a month of battery without RGB. And I can use my phone charger to charge it to a 100% in 2 hours. So having a wireless charging keyboard just doesn't make sense for me.

[Ruslanets]

What's up with the comments under the video? Has anyone else see this?
I was reading the comments, got to that first one and was like "what the hell, how is it related to the topic and why is it liked so much?".
And then immediately after that was the second one.

Does Amazon really just send the bots everywhere to spam about their new crypto or something?

[Jed Byrtus]

THIS IS SOMEHTING THAT HAS BEEN BOTHERING ME ABOUT MY WIRELESS KEYBOARD FOREVER!

It seems so simple now. I'm just gonna tape one of these to the underside of my desk pad and put one of the wireless charging things on my keyboard!

 

Ordered on Ali so I'll see if I remember to update this with my results next month!

 

[matthewb987]

2 hours ago, TannerMcCoolman said:

Wireless keyboards are SUPPOSED to be wireless. So why do we need to keep a wire around to plug them in? We don’t, and for just $2 we will show you how to add Qi-compatible charging to nearly any wireless keyboard.

 

 

 

 

We offer this as a service to our customers it costs no more than $20 normally we also mod mice to let them charge wireless while not in use

[The_Mole]

After modding your keyboard, you can simply print a tray with a hole for a Qi charging coil.

You can either salvage the coil from a cheap or used Qi charger or buy a naked one, like this:
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07XF8WY85 (!)

Put the coil in the hole, connect it, put your keyboard on top.
No more worries about bad positioning.

For completeness, here's a link to a receiver: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08TR8N74X (!)

(Products are from just a quick search. Please check conditions, shipping costs and your requirements before ordering.)

[mariushm]

I don't know ... I'm thinking I'd rather have some removable battery and a clever mechanism of exchanging a depleted battery with another one.

 

For example ... think of how those old sony lithium batteries for walkman were,, picture with such batteries and charger  :

 

wouldn't be too hard to add a usb type-c at one of the ends and a tiny lithium charger ic hidden in the usb type-c and maybe a led to show if battery is fully charged. have some hole on the side of the keyboard where you could slide the battery in, use that usb-c connector to lock battery in place. When battery is discharged, just pull it out, insert another one and plug the discharged one in a charger or usb port on your computer.

 

 

 

[DrBojangles1]

25 minutes ago, The_Mole said:

No more worries about bad positioning.

 

Can you explain how this solves the bad positioning problem in more detail? I'm not following what you're saying.

[AndreiArgeanu]

I have a logitech K270 with 2xAAA batteries that's been going for months. I don't need no QI charging. Nonetheless this is just a waste of time, money and resources because what? You can't get yourself to plug in your keyboard to charge for 30 minutes every month? Are you honestly that lazy? Is this really that big of an incovenience given the long battery life these keyboards typically have?

 

A phone I can somewhat understand, you need to charge it nearly everyday and being able to just place the phone on a pad next to your bed instead of having to fumble with a cable in the dark is convenient. But a keyboard? That is always stationary and within reach of power. That doesn't need charging for long periods of time. Did you think about whether you should do this instead of can you do this?

[The_Mole]

35 minutes ago, DrBojangles1 said:

Can you explain how this solves the bad positioning problem in more detail? I'm not following what you're saying.

Print something like this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1814541 but leave a hole for the Qi charger in the bottom.
Keyboard fits nicely and the charger stays where it should.

[FairPumpkin]

This was really cool, I don't generally have the keyboard fixed in the same place but just the option of moving it to a set place to charge for a bit is awesome.

 

Something this doesn't adress is the battery degradation issue. How large would a capacitor need to be to replace the battery? No need for it to last as long, only like a day or two since you can just "dock" the keyboard to the after use

[Legwarmer]

I got that idea of truly wireless mouse and keyboard for at least a year, but I like Logitechs solution with the much larger coil in the powerplay pad much better, because then you can actually move the keyboard around. Plus it's a much higher frequency (6.78MHz (A4WP standard) compared to Qi's ~105-205kHz) so you don't need these expensive coil+ferrite combos and just use a FR4 PCB for the antenna.

6 minutes ago, FairPumpkin said:

How large would a capacitor need to be to replace the battery?

Capacitors tend to have a much higher self-discharge rate than batteries. A supercap might be possible, but they semm to be as expensive as a lithium cell with a higher capacity.

[Rex Hite]

Eventually there'll be a video complaining about why our mouspads aren't wireless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[themrsbusta]

I use a Microsoft Keyboard 600 and a Microsoft Basic USB mouse, I really don't care about problematic wireless products and I'm pretty sure many people don't care too...

It's not like i'm going to move my desktop every time and I don't care how it looks since I'm the only one using and looking at it. Also wired peripherals have better latency, are more robust and is much cheaper.

 

Linus, look to your wireless house having problems every single time with trivial tasks, you are the worst person to recommend something wireless.

[Jensonl]

4 hours ago, TannerMcCoolman said:

Wireless keyboards are SUPPOSED to be wireless. So why do we need to keep a wire around to plug them in? We don’t, and for just $2 we will show you how to add Qi-compatible charging to nearly any wireless keyboard.

 

 

 

 could you do a pt 2 but you use a power play mat and use the wireless charging part out of one of the logitech mice e.g the g502 light speed and just remove anything that isnt to do with power instead of a receiver coil also this would mean that the placement would be much easer to work with

[Vordreller]

Oh hey the keyboard I got a literal few days ago(the big one with the numpad).

 

I'm loving it. Pricy but now that I've used it a few days I couldn't go back. Really loving it.

[Srius1]

This under wireless charger is $40 on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/KPON-Invisible-Wireless-Distance-Furniture/dp/B092VLFPDX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=11UJ2T0NOUAW9&keywords=Wireless+charger+under+desk&qid=1676157559&sprefix=wireless+charger+under+desk%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-3

 

not sure where they found a $150 one. This $40 one requires a sticker which helps to conduct the power to be placed on the desk (this might have allowed it to work through the mousepad ). 
 

as for these qi chargers/ coils  he showed …few years back I was using this to charge my iPad wirelessly. They would work fine for a month or 2 and then just die out of the blue. One lasted 4 months ..one lasted 2 weeks.  They are terrible quality and WILL DIE on you in a short period of time with actual use. 
 

this makes more sense with a iPad or other tablets as those need a overnight charge . KB is useless as most Logitech have multi month battery life anyways. 

[NamKi007]

Linus This is because the wireless receiver can be anything like your keys or your RFID tags or RFID credit cards, and if you place RFID on wireless power transmitter by accident it will blow your device, if its anything metal like your keys or any other metal thing like your laptop etc it will become very very hot because of eddy currents.

[kumicota]

It's interesting that Linus while supporting green policies, being anti-miner and more, he's making his keyboard to lose about 50% of all the power that it goes to it

[FlybyLV]

I had the same idea about these when I was browsing aliexpress for some stuff and found these. I really enjoy the freedom of wireless, but not the cables which eventually have to be re-attached and the table is just full of standby cables all the time.

Just wanted to show off my autistic setup, bye

[edit] my initial idea was to buy the wireless charger, then make a "hole" on the top of the table, place it in, then have the charging cable let down the table (like I have currently) and then fill the whole where wireless charger rests with some clear epoxy, so you can see the place where it is and you can place your keyboard properly on. But that idea was shut down by my wife ;(

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

I am really not much into keyboards using cheap generic ones and it has been quite some years since i had a wireless one, but that one had no cable.I assume that the keyboards now don´t have room for simple rechargable batteries that you can simply change like it used to be with wireless keyboards?

[Raidzor]

I have a rather definitive answer I truly believe in, and I've outright created an account here specifically to post it.

Now, the main reason people list as to "why not" are low demand, low practicality and low efficiency.

Demand isn't really low, there are lots of people who would want wireless charging for the keyboard because a)They hate wires and b)They hate charging things. Living example of this is Linus himself, a lot of people in this thread and YouTube comments and myself.

The low practicality is overcome with magnets to align the keyboard to the charging or just simple markings on the desk/mousepad, as well as multiple coils so that the position doesn't have to be spot-on, to a point where just the natural movement of the keyboard on the desk over time ensures that it ends up in the correct zone often enough to keep the battery level high.

 

The low efficiency is even sillier of a reason. A keyboard like the Logitech MX Mechanical consumes 132Wh of energy in a year (assuming 8 hour a day long uses with full brightness on the backlight, you'd have to charge the 1500mAh battery 24 times during a year, totalling 132Wh of energy used). That is about equal to the amount of energy released by the gas contained in 2 BIC lighters. Even assuming a 50% efficiency, that is negligible power loss compared to a regular computer power supply, which even at high efficiency ratings can waste hundreds of Wh during a single day (80 plus titanium 1000W PSU at peak efficiency, 50% load, would waste about 120Wh of energy in an 8-hour workday).

 

The main reason that I'm confident in here, is that companies like Logitech are not willing to take a relatively low-profit gamble in this field.
As a person hating wires, plugging in my keyboard every month or so is less of a disturbance compared to having a constantly present wire on my desk going to my mousepad. And it is likely that there are enough people like me that it would offset the profitability from adding wireless keyboard charging into the mousepad (more on this later). Real solution here would be to have desks that have integrated wireless charging (would love to have a well-made one, with several wireless charging pads built in as well as ports, internet switches, usb hubs and power outlets on the back). But the issue here is that no high-profile manufacturers produce both peripherals and desks. So we have a scenario where the desk makers would have to make wireless charging for keyboards that don't exist, and keyboard makers to make keyboards for desks that don't exist.

 

Regarding the wireless charging mousepads, it would be something that I believe companies like Logitech have the full power to make, but they need a nudge in that direction that would signal demand for it, and thus profitability, but it hasn't happened yet. And even if this sort of product starts being highly requested (maybe even as a consequence of the video, wouldn't be the first time companies took note from LMG), there is no guarantee it will be developed and this "gamble" taken, because they still have to account for regular customers such as offices and generic people, where they would have to have solid belief in whether the number of customers driven away by the slightly increased cost will be lower than the new customers brought in by the new feature.
 

[Raidzor]

23 minutes ago, kumicota said:

It's interesting that Linus while supporting green policies, being anti-miner and more, he's making his keyboard to lose about 50% of all the power that it goes to it

50% power loss over a year of charging a wireless keyboard is about 120Wh. That is the same as most computer power supplies lose over a day, the same as an electric stove loses in a couple of minutes and the same a regular gas car loses in a few seconds.

[Necromnicon]

Kind of dumb honestly.   Doesn't solve the original problem of battery constantly charging and having to periodically disconnect it from power AND makes it to where you have to have a certain exact placement for the keyboard to charge it.   Add to the fact that you will probably also need to buy one of those crazy inefficient under desk qi chargers to make this work you are also wasting a boatload of power.   Just use a damn wired keyboard and don't waste money on a wireless one with countless accessories.   Also actual battery powered keyboards are a thing and battery chargers are also a thing.   This whole video is just a spectacular engineering epic fail while pretending to help solve a problem that doesn't exist with an even more pointless solution.   Bravo guys LMAO

 

Also to users of actual modern wireless keyboards,.  Don't those things usually last like 3-6 months per charge anyway?   Is there anyone actually out there that leaves there wireless keyboard plugged in all of the time or even most of the time?   Genuinely curious...

[ichat]

honnestly i feel that many people are just  argueing for the sake of argueing  

for example  stating that  adding a cable to you desk for charging  doens't nessesarily defaea the idea for true wireles charging...  

for example:  i ofting used it on a samsung phone after my usb-charging port died...  i eventually replaced it but  that port being so fimsy made me use QI instead...     true wireless doesnt (or shouldn't) mean that there is never any wire anywhere... it means  i can bumb the keyboard away without thinkin and no wires are there to be break ... whoohooo  
either i can just pickup my keyboard and walk to the couch....   or  hand it to the one sitting next to me... without  my desk instantly becomming a bloody mess...     i would say that placing the QI transmitter on or near the spot where i usually type  / have my keyboard  could be a way to  not ever having to worry if its propperly charged...  than again  what about your mouse....    meaning   you'd still end up with  way to many of these charging pads mounted on  under in or  near your desk.  

what i dont get though, is how linus is claiming it to be so expensive... it must be me living in europe but ive seen these at ikea (for crying out loud) for less than 40$ (35 euro).   and are also under rable mounted... 

i do love @Frigid North's post about  using woodworking  but this might not be for everyone...  as routing is a bit harder to do... 
 therefor i once just got reguar pine-wood planks from my local diy-store  in 2 layers (15mm thickness each)  than with a copingsaw  made a larger hole in one plank  and then glued them together  sanded them propperly and used a hardening (ofter used on floors and stairs) finish on my new desktop...       honnestly i never considered  using QI for a keyboard though    but next desktop might get one... i love the idea of even less cables already   

[MAD HAVEN]

Why not make a hard desk pad that's not flexible but has built-in chargers in it so you can charge your phone mouse and keyboard all on it