This Is the Next Big Thing in Mechanical Gaming Keyboards

howtogeek.com:

In 2019, a relatively unknown keyboard manufacturer introduced the world's first Hall Effect mechanical keyboard. The company was Wooting, and the keyboard was the Wooting two Lekker Edition. Five years later, HE keyboards are starting to gain traction, and that’s great news for gamers.

Hall Effect Sensors Aren’t Limited to Controllers

Most gamers and gaming hardware enthusiasts are familiar with Hall Effect thumbsticks. These sticks are immune to stick drift thanks to a contactless design that uses a magnet and a sensor. As you move the joystick, you also move the magnet relative to the sensor, resulting in changes in voltage. This change is measured and used to report the position of the joystick.

Aside from joysticks, Hall Effect sensors are also used in analog triggers. This time, each of the two triggers features a tiny magnet. As you push the trigger, the magnet gets closer to the sensor, which measures the voltage change and translates it into positional data.

Hall Effect keyboard switches work similarly to Hall Effect analog triggers. You’ve got your regular mechanical switch housing, but you won’t find the usual assembly that includes metal leaves that activate the keystroke once they touch inside the housing. Instead, you’ve got a tiny magnet placed just below the stem, like in the image below.

The bottom of the switch has a hole so that the magnet can fully bottom out. The sensor—the tiny chip at the bottom of the image—is located on the printed circuit board. This measures the change in voltage and determines the position of the magnet.

The sensor’s measurement accuracy is very high. Most HE keyboards feature a customizable actuation point that can be tweaked in 0.1mm increments. Another feature found in Hall Effect keyboards is Rapid Trigger, which allows you to activate the key as soon as you press it and deactivate it as soon as you release it, once the switch starts lifting.

You can then reactivate the key again as soon as you press it