This is Max. Max is on the right (our other rescue dog, Shiloh, is on the left). Max loves belly rubs and peanut butter.

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Max has OCD behaviours. Specifically, he chases his tail when he becomes stressed, and this means he chases his tail over 100 times each day. Here’s a graph of one day of tail-chasing from soon after he came to live with his.

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My partner and I are working hard to help Max reduce this behaviour, and we are making serious progress. I haven’t collected data in a little while, but an updated graph would certainly show a lower frequency and intensity of tail-chasing.

Still, Max has a few particular triggers—there are some specific sounds that seem to irritate him and trigger his tail-chasing behaviour. Last week, we discussed some of these with the behavioural specialist. These include the ignition of our gas stove; the sound of pigeons’ feet landing on our backyard fence; and me typing on my mechanical computer keyboard.

It gradually dawned on me: I was under doctor’s orders to design and purchase a new mechanical keyboard. Sometimes, in life, opportunity simply knocks.

So, here is how I have designed, relatively cheaply, a mechanical computer keyboard to have minimal sound.

The two important factors, at least for Max’s particular noise sensitivity, are as follows:

  1. The sound of the switches. Mechanical keyboards are infamous for sounding clacky, which really irritates everyone except for the user! From memory, my current switches are Cherry MX Browns, and these on the gentle end of the spectrum but still considered quite annoying by non-keyboard nerds. So, I have purchased a set of Outemu Silent Cream Yellow switches (~30 AUD), which the online communities indicate are one of the quietest switches.
  2. The material of the plate. My current plate is made of metal, and I gather that this causes a subtle “ping” noise when a key is released. I have a suspicion that this is the actual cause of Max’s discomfort around my keyboard. So, I have purchased a Keychron V3 barebones keyboard (~150 AUD), which has a plastic plate.

You could also get keycaps of a specific material (e.g. soft silicon rather than hard plastic). I didn’t bother, because my gut feeling is that Max does not get triggered by the sound of the keycaps themselves (e.g. fingernails on the hard plastic).

Here is a comparison of the sound levels from my previous keyboard (Ducky Origin Phantom with Cherry MX Browns) and my new keyboard (Keychron V3 with Outemu Silent Cream Yellows).

  • As a baseline, I measured the sound of my mouse. This is because decibel metres on phone apps aren’t exactly accurate, so this gives us a convenient reference point. The app told me that my mouse clicks were 50 dB.
  • In comparison, my previous keyboard’s key tapping is 60 dB.
  • And my new keyboard’s keyboard tapping is 45 dB.

Plus, it lights up!