r/glorious • u/Gigahawk • Apr 25 '21
Discussion GMMK Pro review from a QMK user's perspective
EDIT: Reposted to r/mechanicalkeyboards here cause I thought this post was shadowbanned. I've since made edits to it and can't be bothered to update two posts together, go and read that one for the latest and greatest version of this post.
Hardware
Overall feels great, there's still room for improvement though: * Getting switches to clip into the polycarb plate properly was kind of annoying but I guess that's to be expected with such a flexible material. * The PCB has quite a bit of warp when disassembled, but it seems fine after screwing the top on. * For a mass market device intended to be disassembled, there could be fewer screw types/lengths * Polycarb plate requires quite a bit of force to get the screws to thread. Pretapping the holes a bit would be nice.
Software
Glorious Core
Honestly the user experience is generally really awful, here's a some of my complaints: * Why is the software unsigned? It's pretty concerning to just host some random binary on your website and tell customers to trust that it definitely comes from Glorious and not anyone malicious. * The wording on some things is just weird or poor * What is this checkbox even supposed to do? * Maybe spend more time proofreading the manual instead of making it look pretty * That doesn't look like a Print Screen key to me * Why is there random Chinese text in the profile export? * Why are the hotkey combos not configurable? What's even the point of having hotkey combos if I have to look at the manual to figure them out? * Why is there exactly 3 profiles and 3 layers? * What even is the difference between profiles and layers? * The default behavior for a layer is to completely override all behavior of the layer below it, which is no different from what a profile does, except now there's a confusing hierarchy of hotkey combos to find the one you're looking for. * What if I want fewer profiles or layers? Most people are probably never going to use more than one or two, I personally want a single profile with two layers. * Why do the Fn combos require Fn to be the first key pressed? * The exported profile JSON seems to contain quite a lot of settings not accessible through Glorious Core, care to document what those do? * Why is there no way to reset a single key to default behavior?
QMK
They really did just the bare minimum for this, it honestly feels like it was just an afterthought to attract keyboard enthusiasts who didn't look too deep into it before preordering like me.
VIA support
Nonexistent, at least from GMMK. I have no idea what the problem is, it's really not that hard * Here's someone's implementation * Here's another one * Here's the most promising one so far * This pull request also catches another mistake from the original keymap, just another thing they've screwed up.
RGB support
This is supposedly being worked on, but given that they didn't even bother to answer this question from a month ago somehow I doubt it.
At a glance they look like SK6812MINI-Es, if QMK support was the goal these would have been a no brainer, as they are already natively supported. However, they're actually generic common anode 6028 RGB leds, which require an external controller to drive them. I have no idea why these were chosen, except for maybe they happened to be a lot cheaper than the SK6812MINI-Es. QMK does actually have support for driving a common anode RGB array with an IS31FL3733. However, it looks like GMMK has again cheaped out and used what I assume is some random obscure driver chip. Searching up the markings on the chip don't bring up anything useful. The footprint looks like QFN-44 (5x5mm), which curiously seems to only match up with IS31FL3237. It's unlikely that this is the case however, since the IS31FL3237 only has 36 channels, which means with the two chips in the Pro could only drive the leds for at most 2(chips)x36(channels)/3(r,g,b) = 24 keys. In any case, this chip doesn't have QMK support either.
Batch 3 QMK incompatibility
This tweet is pretty concerning. It is actually possible to use STM chips not officially supported by QMK without any modifications if the chip happens to be similar enough to a chip that already has support. However since there's no mention of the actual chip they intend to use as a replacement, I imagine their confidence in this being possible is fairly low. In the event that they actually need to add support for a new chip, getting it to happen will probably take quite a while, since QMK requires new ARM chips to be first supported by ChibiOS-Contrib.
Conclusion
Given that GloriousThrall's Github has been dead for over a month now, I find it hard to believe that QMK support was ever intended to be anything more than a marketing gimmick. There seems to be very little interest in actually providing support for QMK users, and if anything it seems that they have actively made decisions to make QMK support harder except for the initial choice of MCU. However, actually getting QMK support for a new
5
u/wtfa54 Apr 26 '21
This is an excellent write up and incredibly disappointing to see. If you're not releasing a product with all of the promised features, it would at least be nice to see that the present features are well implemented. But basic customization options appear to be missing from the Glorious Core software. I've been trying to be optimistic and keep an open mind and level expectations about the product but more and more I just see areas where it looks like corners were cut or details were just plain not thought through properly. It's frustrating to release a half-baked product then ask your community to wait for you to fix it. It would've been awesome for this to be an easy recommend for anyone trying to get into more custom mechs, but at this point it looks like it's just not really worth the time and money. It'd be great to see meaningful progress made in addressing these issues because I really do like the look of the board itself and just want to be able to eagerly anticipate receiving my order rather than anxiously hoping I'll get a product that has anything resembling the functionality that was promised.
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u/Mycroft2046 Apr 26 '21
Why was this shadowbanned?
3
Apr 26 '21
Hi there, posted a reply in the sticky above. This was not removed by anyone on our team.
Also, bullet points on "shadowbanning" since I'm a nerd who thinks things like this are fascinating:
A user being "shadowbanned" means they are placed on a blacklist for particular subreddits or sitewide on Reddit.
When a "shadowbanned" user goes to post, any text/link post submitted is automatically hidden until a moderator of the sub manually approves it.
These posts will not appear in the subreddit's new/front/top pages at all until approved, so you wouldn't see a title with the body as [removed] if someone was shadowbanned.
Subreddit moderators are not able to shadowban users. It is either a manual action from a Reddit Admin or something automated by the site on the backend.
So no shadowbans here.
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u/Mycroft2046 Apr 26 '21
Okay, because the OP posted in another sub saying this post was shadowbanned. You might want to clear the air on that one in that sub too. Just sayin'.
EDIT: Looks like it has already been cleared up.
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Apr 26 '21
Bc it criticized glorious
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Apr 26 '21
Nope, see the sticky above.
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Apr 26 '21
Hmm... it was removed tho. Guess it came back......
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Apr 26 '21
Please read the sticky! Have it explained there along with screenshots from the mod logs.
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u/s0l0Kill Apr 27 '21
CEO and community manager replied, both said they'll get answers, still nothing since.
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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
EDIT: Our director of engineering just posted an update on Core, QMK, and VIA over here.
Hey there,
Just dropping by to clarify that this post was not taken down by any moderator or our automod. Reddit flagged at least one of the links in this post as suspicious and required a manual moderator approval. As OP edited the post, my assumption would be that their original post was fine and then something they added to it after the fact got flagged.
For anyone interested in what this looks like from my end:
Here's the entirety of the subreddit moderation logs for the last 24 hours. You can see where automod stickied a comment as this post went up and you can see where I was required to manually approve it. This is set to filter by ALL moderators including automod. There is no mod removal of this post in here.
Here's my view on the post with Mod Toolbox. There is no removal from a moderator of the subreddit, only my approval. For reference, if it had been manually removed and then manually approved, it would look like this.
TL;DR
Glorious staff and our volunteer moderators never remove posts on the basis of them criticizing our products or brand if they're starting a conversation in good faith.
ALSO, the contents of this have been passed along to the appropriate teams and there should be additional comment on this post from staff today.