The Das Keyboard 5Q keeps you on track of…everything

The first alarm you hear in the morning is only the beginning of a long string of alarms that will go off over the course of the day. Not just the days you’re working of course, because even your days off aren’t really days off. You not only have deadlines breathing down your neck from work, but social media, emails, snail mail, stocks to watch, team projects, and more all have running timers in the back of your mind. For those who work online, your computer never gets shut off, because switching off means getting further behind.

 If you work on a computer, then you normally have a balancing act of timers for this and that running every minute of every day, of which you are either on top of or terribly behind on. Sometimes things are forgotten about, and you end up pulling all-nighters to fix the situation. The Das Keyboard 5Q is hoping to help with that, as this will not only help you type at super speeds on clickty-clackity keys, but will give you ambient reminders through colored backlit keys that you program. Your reminders will be in your peripheral vision, so it’s about the same as checking the weather by looking out the window rather than opening a new tab and getting distracted.

The keys are called Gamma Zulu, being quite similar in feel and performance to the Cherry MX browns, and were designed by Das and made by Omron. They have N-key rollover, no delay, anti-ghosting, and can handle 100 million actuations. There’s a Q button (think of a volume knob, which it is also capable of being) which will give you the low-down on what data your keyboard is presently streaming with a simple tap. This is so you can’t forget why you set the ‘x’ key to fade from green to red over the course of a random Wednesday. Every single one of the 104 keys, as well as the light pipes on the side and Q button light pipe can be programmed independently. This is supposed to help you keep track of your life a bit better, and as you’re the one programming the light show of your life, you’ll know what it all means. You can presently get this for $139, but the price will climb up over $200 if you wait until after this already successful crowdfunding campaign is over.

Available for crowdfunding on Kickstarter