Imagine turning on your computer one day and realizing your mouse or keyboard no longer works the way you programmed it. The scroll wheel goes the wrong way. Your macros don’t trigger. Your shortcuts are gone.
You open the configuration app to see what’s going on… and you’re greeted with a blank screen. Nothing loads.
That’s exactly what happened to many Logitech users on macOS a couple of weeks ago. Both Logi Options+ and Logi G Hub stopped working due to an expired certificate.
Logitech quickly released a manual patch, but the incident made many people rethink whether they want their peripherals to depend on software running in the background.
So this feels like the perfect moment to explain why something like that could never happen to our keyboards, and what the trade-offs of our approach are.
Why This Could Never Happen to Us
The explanation is simple: our programmable keyboards don’t need an app running in the background to work.
You do use an app to configure them, but once that’s done, the configuration is stored directly in the keyboard itself.
The Pros of Onboard Configuration
The biggest advantage is that you don’t need to install the app on every device where you want to use your keyboard.
This becomes critical if your company doesn’t allow third-party apps on work computers, you want to use your keyboard with phones or tablets, or you’re working on a shared computer, server, or remote desktop
You simply plug in the keyboard, and everything works exactly as you configured it.
Another benefit is performance. There’s one less app running in the background, which can affect system resources and latency. All the processing happens on the keyboard itself, not on your computer.
It’s also worth noting that the customization options offered by apps like Logi Options are far more limited than those of a fully programmable keyboard. You can remap some keys, but not the entire layout, and the actions you can assign are constrained.
You can extend functionality with tools like AutoHotkey on Windows or Karabiner and Better Mouse on macOS, but that again requires additional software running in the background.
Finally, if our configuration app ever stops working, your keyboard will continue behaving exactly as you programmed it. The only thing affected would be your ability to reconfigure it, which is far less critical.
The Trade-Offs
Of course, this approach isn’t perfect.
For example, apps like Logi Options make it very easy to assign a button to launch an application.
You can do that with our keyboards, too, but it’s more involved. On macOS, for instance, you’d create a macro that presses CMD + Space, types the app name, and hits Enter.
Another limitation is toggled macros, sequences that run indefinitely until you press the button again. That’s not possible on our keyboards because the microcontrollers inside them are less powerful than your computer.
And that leads to the final drawback: storing configuration and logic on the device requires onboard memory and processing power, which increases hardware costs.
Our keyboards use a Nordic nRF52833 chip with a 32 MHz processor, 512 KB of flash memory, and 128 KB of RAM, which is quite powerful for a keyboard, but still limited compared to a full computer.
How could we improve Bazecor?
However, our solution could be better. Even though our keyboards don’t require an app to work, you still need one to configure them. And while Bazecor is available on macOS, Windows, and Linux, there are cases where installing software isn’t possible.
Think Chromebooks, tablets, or locked-down corporate environments. In those situations, you’d need another computer to configure your keyboard.
One potential solution is a web-based configurator that runs directly in your browser. This comes with its own trade-offs, like requiring an internet connection, but it could be a powerful option.
We’ve explored this in the past without success, but we’ll continue investigating it. Our goal is to give you as many ways as possible to configure your keyboard.
So that’s why something like the Logi Options debacle could never happen to our keyboards.
Do you prefer knowing your configuration lives safely inside your keyboard, independent of software? Or would you trade that reliability for extra features that require an app running in the background?
