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geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: Cindori on Wed, 05 September 2012, 12:13:10

Title: Race constant LED on
Post by: Cindori on Wed, 05 September 2012, 12:13:10
The suckiest thing about KBT Race is that LED resets on restart. This means you have to do Fn key mashing to re-enable the LEDs constantly.

Anyone think this might be modded to make the LED stay on always? By soldering somehow. I have experience with digital circuits but not so much with soldering.
If anyone has a hi res picture of the PCB that would be great.
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: domoaligato on Mon, 17 September 2012, 14:54:05
if you plug it into a powered usb hub it will stay on due to the powered usb hub using a dedicated power source.

make sure the usb hub has a separate ac adapter.
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: sth on Mon, 17 September 2012, 14:58:48
if it were a single key i would say you could just jump it but it requires an fn+key combination, so it's handled by the controller. not that it wouldn't be possible, just harder to do.

domoaligato -- that would work but it would be on ALL the time, and i think Cindori just wants it to come on automatically whenever the computer sends power.
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: rowdy on Mon, 17 September 2012, 20:28:05
The original Ducky Shine has this problem, but I don't reboot that often so it is not that much of a problem.

But if there is a simple hack that can be done, well ...
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: 1391401 on Tue, 18 September 2012, 10:25:07
I forget if this happens on windows or linux, but when I had it connected to my Mac at work it would turn the LEDs off whenever the mac went to sleep too not just power off :\
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: Cindori on Tue, 18 September 2012, 13:51:45
I forget if this happens on windows or linux, but when I had it connected to my Mac at work it would turn the LEDs off whenever the mac went to sleep too not just power off :\

well thats how sleep works. every led keyboard will behave the same.

its not the issue that it turns off, its the issue that I need to do hotkey dance with my fingers on every boot to get my preferred lightning mode.

here is hires pics of race boards:

(http://groths.se/race/det1.png)
(http://groths.se/race/det2.png)
(http://groths.se/race/det3.png)

Right click - Show image to get full sized.

That holtek controller is for the keyboard. I wonder what the other thing is. It looks a bit smeared, like someone wiped the text off it....

I´m not too comfortable with circuit boards, but I guess its likely to be that component responsible for the LEDS.

However, the thingies to the lower right also caught my eye. Are they D-elements? (state components) they are labeled Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4...
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: sth on Tue, 18 September 2012, 13:54:13
those are the DIP switches that swap keys around but i dont think that any of them keep the LEDs on.
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: Cindori on Tue, 18 September 2012, 13:58:17
Ok Good
That rules those out!
We are making progress ;-)
Title: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: 1391401 on Wed, 19 September 2012, 20:11:43
well thats how sleep works. every led keyboard will behave the same.
I guess mac and PC is different - the mac goes to 'sleep' aka the screen turns off and all power to USB seems to be cut, whereas a PC goes to sleep and the screen just turns off.  Standby is a whole 'nother thing.  Would be cool though for the keyboard to have a memory and start back up at the same brightness/LED setting.
Title: Re: Re: Race constant LED on
Post by: TheProfosist on Thu, 20 September 2012, 01:18:26
well thats how sleep works. every led keyboard will behave the same.
I guess mac and PC is different - the mac goes to 'sleep' aka the screen turns off and all power to USB seems to be cut, whereas a PC goes to sleep and the screen just turns off.  Standby is a whole 'nother thing.  Would be cool though for the keyboard to have a memory and start back up at the same brightness/LED setting.
sleep and standy have merged with win7