BANC
Banc d'essai. A test bench.
The configurator is a web page, not an install. It does four things, and three of them exist so that you can see the fourth.
The actuation map · click a key
Scroll sideways for the whole board →
Every key holds its own actuation point. Click one — or drag across several — and set it below. The shading is the depth: pale is shallow, deep red is close to the stop.
This is a drawing of the real thing, on this page, with no board plugged in. BANC itself talks to the keyboard over WebHID and writes these numbers to it.
Four things
01
Set the actuation point
Per key, anywhere from 0.10 to 3.40 mm. Paint it across the board with a drag, or type a number.
02
Rapid trigger
Release delta and press delta, each settable from 0.02 to 1.00 mm. Off by default, because it is a change to how your keyboard behaves and you should choose it.
03
Read the live trace
Every key, 8 000 samples a second, plotted. The other three settings exist so that you can change what you see here.
04
Write the layer map
Four layers, stored on the board. It works the same on a machine that has never seen BANC.
Honestly
What it cannot do.
BANC talks to the board over WebHID. That works in Chrome, Edge and Opera. Safari and Firefox have not implemented WebHID and we are not going to pretend otherwise, or ask you to install a driver to get around it.
Everything BANC writes lives on the board. Set it up once on a machine that has a browser which can talk to it, then plug the keyboard into anything — a locked work laptop, a KVM, a machine that has never heard of us — and it behaves exactly as you left it. There is no background service, no account, and nothing to log in to.
There is no macro recorder. A keyboard that can type things you did not type is a keyboard that gets you banned from somewhere, and we would rather it were not ours.
Questions people actually ask
Does it work without your software?
Yes. The board arrives with a sensible actuation point already written to it and behaves as an ordinary USB keyboard on a machine that has never seen BANC. The settings live on the board, not in a driver.
Which operating systems?
Any that speak USB HID, which is all of them. BANC needs WebHID, so it runs in Chrome, Edge and Opera. Safari and Firefox do not implement WebHID and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Can I use my own keycaps?
Yes. The stem is a standard cross mount and the layout is standard ANSI, including a 6.25 u space bar and 1.25 u bottom-row modifiers. The magnet is in the switch, not the cap.
Can I use my own switches?
Only magnetic ones. The sockets are five-pin and mechanically standard, but there is no metal contact underneath to close — there is a sensor. A normal mechanical switch will fit and do nothing.
Is the certificate real?
The measurement procedure is. ENTREFER is an invented company; see the note at the foot of every page.