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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: sigi on Thu, 08 November 2012, 11:11:43
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HI
Yesterday I receive a lot of 3mm leds from ebay (all colors) and now Im ready to MOD the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium unit, but Im not sure about to change a lot of keys leds os just a few, so It is a good idea to have a rainbow of colors on the keyboard or not?
For me it is an standard that the WASD and the arroy keys need to be a diferent colors but how about the F keys? etc...
One thing about the leds is that all are cristal clear but not all can be used to swap the blue ones on the AIVIA, for example the Purple ones need more voltage to produce a good light and get that will be complicated... so I will use only the colors that can be swaped with no aditional electronics... the only way to know if a led is apropiate is to test it directly on the keyboard... so I will start doing that...
Any layout ideas are welcome...
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Good colors to replace blue are green, pink, and white. If you plan ahead you can find red ones that have similar power specs to the blue leds, but they are usually lower voltage and will cook on lines meant for the blue range.
As to color choice and layout... my walls are bare, I am no decorator. Good luck.
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Just looked up that gigibyte board because I had not heard of it before. Does anyone know if this is costar or ione based? It's one of the few backlit boards that isn't plagued with terrible "gamer" font and I quite like the volume scroll wheel on it. I'm not in the market for a new keyboard, but I do wish I had known about this one before I had lost all desire to own something with a backlight XD
Although while I had it, I really liked my xarmor.
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HI
Yesterday I receive a lot of 3mm leds from ebay (all colors) and now Im ready to MOD the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium unit, but Im not sure about to change a lot of keys leds os just a few, so It is a good idea to have a rainbow of colors on the keyboard or not?
For me it is an standard that the WASD and the arroy keys need to be a diferent colors but how about the F keys? etc...
One thing about the leds is that all are cristal clear but not all can be used to swap the blue ones on the AIVIA, for example the Purple ones need more voltage to produce a good light and get that will be complicated... so I will use only the colors that can be swaped with no aditional electronics... the only way to know if a led is apropiate is to test it directly on the keyboard... so I will start doing that...
Any layout ideas are welcome...
From my shallow level of research around mech kb backliting, seems like the voltage rating of the LED you mod/swap must be suitable. Most of the boards out there either run on 1.8V or around 3V(depending on the color, RED normally around 1.8V and BLUE normally around 3.0).
For normal case, when the whole board is equipped with 1.8V and you insert a 3.0V LED into it, the 3.0V LED will light up dimly or doesn't even light up.
The only board that manage to mix between LEDs of different wattage at the same time is Razer BWU. 1.8V and 3.0V LED can both operating normally at the same time.
The referral link(in Chinese though) - http://www.waishehome.cn/thread-45648-1-1.html
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Aivia is an iOne board. I think this is one of the more interesting led mod I have seen, where they made rainbow style. Might not be your taste, but it's a good example I think.
(http://i.imgur.com/GhHHa.jpg)
From my understanding most backlight keyboard use led with an operational range. LED need to be able to handle 1.8-3.2v, how do you think the brightness levels work? It's merely voltage adjustment.
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Not all iOne board are the same(having the same electrical properties) AFAIK.
Details regarding LED mod(again it is in Chinese and you need to register an account there to view the hidden content, which is also the main point of the thread).
http://www.waishehome.cn/thread-45594-1-3.html
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a litle experiment shows blue leds direct compatibility with white, green, and pink only... I hope that the board allows the red, orange and yellow work... if not maybe a small resistor on the "reds" solve the problem, will see...
Note: the purple ones did not work on any family...
(http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/5849/p1020696pz.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/p1020696pz.jpg/)
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How are they able to get different LED colors on that board? Different LED colors have different voltage range, which require different resistors. And I don't think there is a resistor for every LED on that board...
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a litle experiment shows blue leds direct compatibility with white, green, and pink only... I hope that the board allows the red, orange and yellow work... if not maybe a small resistor on the "reds" solve the problem, will see...
Note: the purple ones did not work on any family...
(http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/5849/p1020696pz.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/p1020696pz.jpg/)
Wow. I can remember when there were only red and green LEDs, and orange ones were rare.
Now get off my lawn!!
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by now I only change the numlock and the other 2 status leds to white ones... those leds are very dificult to replace because they are solded in both sides of the PCB!!! :eek:
The good news is that as far as I see the circuitry is designed to change the leds with no aditional electronics, VERY COOL! I suspect they use a current regulator mini chip for each led, using that they will get a very homogenic look on all the leds and when u use any other led it will work very good, even the purple ones works on that thing! Awesome! ;D
the blue leds used on the Aivia are not standard, they are 3mm and not the crystal clear ones (a litle withe on the plastic) and they dont have the same shape of an standard 3mm led... so that makes more complicated the mod... so will see what happeds in the next days...
I will post some aditional images tonight...