This keyboard was built for the sole purpose of spamming emotes in Discord

YouTube

TaeKeyboards recently put out the build video for this epic Discord Emoji Board V1 on their Youtube channel, and it's totally memerific.

The idea was formed around the universal truth that emojis (more commonly known as emotes) are the "backbone of every good server." And was built using a Peronic, ortholinear mechanical keyboard as a base. Perhaps this is a better use for it, honestly—I mean, what kind of monster actually uses one of these for typing?

Down to the details: we're looking at a hot-swappable PCB in a tray-mount board base, with a swanky, yellow-grey custom design because, the designer admits, they wanted "something nice and bright on my desk." And presumably due to the self-confessed obsession with the Seulgi Sun emoji.

The key switches are Dragonfruit, part of the TKC X C³EQUALZ Fruit series. These are 63.5g Tactile switches with gold plated internals and a "lighter and weaker bump than Kiwis." Apparently they were a bit "pingy and crunchy," but this was improved with the use of 0.18mm Laser_Ninja films, Tribosys 3203 lube, and simply oiling the springs.

Perfect peripherals

Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio

The project wasn't without other hiccups, of course. The first intention was to program the macros on VIA, but the old Pretonic board wasn't on there, and after some fiddling about they realised it only supported 16 macros. So instead they decided to enlist the help of Xelus, and their masterful QMK skills.

Initially it was only possible to send one emoji at a time, but a recent update on the Reddit post notes Xelus has now managed to configure it so that you can add multiple emoji to a message and holding a key down will auto-send it. Nifty.

With textured tops, the super low-profile relegendable keycaps (from X-keys) obscure the emojis quite a bit, but otherwise this is a cracking build. Very impressed.

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.