See, the thing is with BLF group buys, the advantage is that most of the R&D is done here, and most the parts used are ācommonly availableā compared to say keyboards.
Letās take the FW3A here:
The LEDs used are 3535 commonly available XP-L HI and LH351Ds in a triple setup, which allows for a lower price/LED when bought in bulk.
2. The driver and firmware have been designed by BLF members on their free time.
3. The design of the light and specifications have been done by BLF members.
Also, the parts/design can be used on other lights, like with the BLF Q8 spawning the Sofirn Q8, Sofirn SP36, Sofirn C8F 18650/21700, Lumintop GT/GT Mini/GT Micro.
Itās also been proven multiple times that BLF lights are extremely popular, and members almost always buy the lights.
We are a proven market, which isnāt too risky.
If I understand correctly, some keyboard companies (like Ajazz) have been willing to work with the community to do custom projects like BLF doesā¦ or at least customized products. But the community hasnāt really pursued that because it offers limited control and no profit? So the projects follow a different pattern instead.
It would take time and probably multiple projects to build a good relationship with keyboard companies, to get to a point similar to where BLF is at. It took a long time to go from group buys to special editions to completely custom products. I get the impression people havenāt been willing to follow that path though, because itās too slow and itās a lot of work for no compensation. Plus, keyboards require more extensive circuit designs and more extensive firmware, which raises the barrier to entry. But it seems like enough of that work is done now that it could maybe still be feasible.
Anyway, Iām not heavily involved in the keyboard community so Iām going based on outside impressions and limited involvement in a couple of the development subcommunities there. Regardless, it sounds like there are still some pretty nice items being made, and I look forward to some Iāve heard may be coming soon.
For now though, Iām typing on a keyboard Iāve customized quite a bit, configured so light splashes like raindrops at every keypress.
It doesnāt even have labels. Iām using blank white keycaps because it lets the light shine through better.
Maybe I should put up a video sometime soon. It looks like the keys are made out of white chocolate, except that they have rainbow lights splashing around underneath.
Yup. If you wanna do a group buy for custom keycaps (which usually costs more than $100) you have to give em your money first then wait up to a year (or more) to receive them. Right now thereās a group buy going on for keycaps where the chinese manufacturer hasnāt responded to messages in over a month.
I donāt have China experience, but there may be some generalization of West vs. Asia here. My experience working in a Japanese office is that there is a cultural barrier as well as a language barrier, and the cultural one is far more significant to our understanding, often resulting in those processes that donāt seem to follow common sense, as you describe. Our concept of a strong leader who can take executive control when the rabble canāt agree isnāt universally shared outside of the West. And again, I donāt know about China, but I saw meetings being held late into the night over the smallest, most trivial (in my opinion) stuff when I was in Japan because they wanted everyone to feel like their voices had been heard. When I suggested they just let a leader take all the evidence into consideration and make a suitable decision, or even to take an office-wide vote and go with the majority opinion, they looked at me like I didnāt have any common sense myself.
^ not following common sense is the short answer, these questions have come up before and in the long answer I certainly brought up both the language and cultural barrier. Still even for a chinese company with their chinese way of doing things I think that following a āwesternā approach to developing new products would be beneficial overall.
Messing around with an idea for a dual-purpose clip thats only possible due to the FW3Aās geometry. Default is a deep carry, with a cap clip on the tailside. The clip goes through itself, having to pull it out to get a cap-bill through. The sketch is exaggerated to make the design obvious. The first bend coming off of the body wouldnāt create a gap between it and the return bend
