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Why 3.5mm TRRS? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Tiuku@sopuli.xyz to c/splitmechkeyboards@lemmy.world

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All split keyboards I'm aware of connect the halves with 3.5mm TRRS jacks, if not wireless. QMK and ZMK boards alike. Why is that?

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[–] halfdane@piefed.social 5 points 6 months ago

The most common development board for keyboards at the time was the arduino pro micro, which didn't support more than one USB connection at a time - most development boards don't support that until now, so to use the USB protocol, you'd have to use two development boards per side, which makes everything expensive and complicated.

Due to the damage risk of TRRS, a few modern builds use usb-c connectors - but only for the electrical connection: underneath it's still the same 4-wire protocol.

The first split keyboard with qmk (the "Let's split") was announced 2014 and was in development a lot longer before, while usb-c was only announced 2014, so even for just the 4-wire communication that connector would've been too late.

And I think the "Let's split"'s influence was strong enough for the TRRS to keep being used despite their risk of frying your chipset.