Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX

ROG Falchion Ace HFX 65% analog gaming keyboard with pre-lubed ROG Magnetic Switches, Rapid Trigger toggle, Speed Tab, interactive touch panel, 8000Hz polling rate, five-layer dampening and silicone gasket mount, dual Type-C ports, three tilt angles, and cover case.¹

Hmm… this is partly an exercise in learning how to type on a new (65%) keyboard.

Definitions:

• ROG: “…a premier sub-brand established in 2006 dedicated to creating top-tier, innovative hardware for gamers and enthusiasts…”²

Can I turn off the lighting animation? #

My first question. I even asked in in Best Buy before buying the keyboard. They didn’t know about Linux, but said I could always return it.

Lighting animation can be turned off, although I’m not sure this can be saved as a default: see My favorite profile.

Effect controls #

Some lighting controls:

Light effect switch:

• Fn + Right or Fn + Left

Note sure what this does….seems to just mess things up.

Brightness level:

• Fn + Up: brightness up
• Fn + Down: brightness down

Profile Switch:

• Fn + A/S/D/F/G/H (H is the default)

The Profile Switch seems significant settings seem significant. So far Fn + A suits me. (I’m not sure about that?)

Reset to factory defaults #

Fn + Caps resets to factory defaults. Hold the buttons until the LEDs blink green.

Note that on my system, Caps is remapped to Esc. Caps is “Shift + Caps”. Reset to factory default with “Fn + Caps + Shift”.

Where are the tilde and backtick characters? #

• backtick (```): Fn + Esc (note that this not working for Fn + Caps + Shift (my additional Escape key))

• tilde (~): Fn + Shift + Esc (again, using the real Escape key on my system).

Where is the Home key? #

The Home key is Fn + PgUp

Where is the End key? #

The End key is Fn + PgDn.

Where is the Print key? #

The Print Screen key is Fn + P. This is the Omarchy shortcut for taking a screenshot.

Access the Function keys #

To access the function keys, F1, F2, etc, use the “F-Switch”: Fn + Ins.

Where is the Slider Bar? #

The slider bar is on the left side of the back panel.

The slider bar has 5 modes. The modes are shown on the top left of the keyboard.

The modes, in order:

• media control: this works for me out of the box
• media content (next track/previous track): not tested yet
• brightness adjustment: seems to have no effect (that’s fine)
• actuation point adjustment: see next section
• customization (try not to do this!)

Customizing the “actuation point” #

The actuation point is the distance that a key has to travel to register a key press.

From the docs: entering “Actuation point mode” (by clicking the button on the left of the back panel) then sliding the slider from left to right will increase the actuation point.

This has a noticeable effect.

Setting the actuation point to the smallest possible setting is chaotic — especially with the space bar. (Possibly look at per-key actuation later (it’s in the docs).)

Somewhere around the middle seems right.

What is speed tap? #

Speed tap is entered with Fn + Tab. I’m sure I don’t want it.

For context, I’m trying to understand something that went haywire with the space bar a few minutes ago. Spaces just started printing on Neovim. See notes / Adjusting the repeat delay setting on Hyprland.

Rapid mode #

The rapid mode trigger indicator is on the top right. It’s toggled with the switch on the back right panel. I probably don’t want to be in rapid mode.

What is the ROG key? #

The “ROG” key is what I’m tentatively calling the key that’s immediately to the right of the Fn key. Clicking it on my system returns the key codes (tested with evtest):

• 524 (KEY_LEFTMETA)
• 16 (KEY_LEFTSHIFT)
• 0 (seemingly KEY_F23)

Attempts to remap this to something useful failed, until I realized that Wayland is seeing the key as SUPER_L + SHIFT_L + XF86Assistant (tested with wev. ) XF86Assistant is how Wayland understands KEY_F23. (Edit: actually Wayland, or at least Hyprland, understand the key as code:201).

Wayland seems to ignore the XF86Assistant part of the key combination though, so the key is the equivalent of SUPER + SHIFT. That’s a useful key combination for me.

Making use of KEY_F23 #

KEY_F23 (XF86Assistant) is also key: 201. From the output of wev:

[        16:     wl_keyboard] key: serial: 12909; time: 16111998; key: 201; state: 1 (pressed)
                      sym: XF86Assistant (268964423), utf8: ''

The key: 201 signifier can be used in Hyprland key bindings.

Completely override the “SUPER + SHIFT” functionality for the ROG key:

bind = SUPER SHIFT, code:201, exec, omarchy-launch-webapp "https://zalgorithm.com/search/"

That removes the useful SUPER + SHIFT functionality though.

By combining SUPER SHIFT, code:201 with some other key, a new binding can be created while keeping the SUPER + SHIFT functionality. For example:

# see: https://wiki.hypr.land/Configuring/Binds/
bind = SUPER SHIFT code:201, R, submap, resize
submap = resize

binde = , H, resizeactive, -10 0
binde = , J, resizeactive, 0 10
binde = , K, resizeactive, 0 -10
binde = , L, resizeactive, 10 0

bind = ,escape, submap, reset
submap = reset

I like that.

My favorite profile #

On Linux I don’t think I can save profiles. I think this gets me to the profile I like:

• select “default” profile with Fn + H
• click through “Light effects” with Fn + Right or Fn + Left until you get to a completely static profile. The keys are illuminated (beige/very-pale-green) and the lighting is entirely static. Peace at last…

Potential Linux issues and fixes #

• How do I stop my ROG Falchion wireless keyboard from rebooting Ubuntu?