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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: gr3yh4m3 on Tue, 22 April 2014, 10:26:14
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Hey guys,
So I'm coming at you now from a Ducky Zero! Browns :) I've had brilliant suggestions in other posts on this forum before about what keyboard and switches to buy, and this being my first mecha keyboard I think it's a nice start :)
But my confession..
It's back-lit, against a friendly and thoughtful suggestion in another thread.. I was (ahh geez) too ashamed to admit that I have a vision impairment and have trouble seeing caps without a back-lighting. Even with adequate room lighting. And although there was cause for concern about the build quality of caps with back-lighting, I thin Ducky have done a brilliant job here (minus the number row), and I also saw a modded back-lit board with normal caps so the light just shone through the gaps and it looked pretty sweet. Not sure how practical it was, but there may just be one way to find out :P
Anyway the reason why I bug you guys at this fine hour of the morning is that I'll be going back to my parent's place for the holidays and am thinking about actually changing the colour of LED's in this board. Oh, I forgot to mention that it's blue, a dark blue, which isn't really great. I mean it's okay, but not great. I previously had a logitech k800 back-lit that had white LED's and it was fantastic, so I would like to swap the blues over for whites.
I've read enough to know that this board is pretty easy to disassemble and all that's really required are 3mm LED's and soldering gear. But I'm just wondering if anyone happened to know whether there were certain things to look out for in a set of LEDs.. like whether 3.4 V is too high, 8000 mcd not bright enough, basically.
So my question is, what is the ideal LED to put into mecha keyboards? Please be specific, as listed above: what voltage, mcd, and current.
Thanks guys, as always!
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Blue and white LED's tend to have fairly similar voltage drops and sometimes current ratings, too. Almost any white LED can be used as long as it fits (2x3x4 flat LED's without shoulder or 3mm round LED's without flange). The current will most likely be well within the range of the replacement LED's unless the originals are SUPER bright and had a really big voltage drop. I would swap out a couple, test it and then decide if you want to change the resistors (too bright or too dim). Then do the rest of the board.
You can use this to calculate the resistor values if you know the LED specs: http://ledcalc.com/
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As an alternative, how old is the Ducky Zero? You could maybe sell it and buy a new Ducky Shine with white LED.
I guess that depends on how much effort you want to put into desoldering and resoldering LEDs.
And FWIW I have a Ducky Shine (version 1) that has had fairly heavy usage for a year and the keycaps are still fine.
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Thanks guys, yeah I could sell it and just get a new one, but I can't find one as cheap as I got this board, with brown switches too. I'm all for trying out different switches, but I just want to get used to this boars first. Besides I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy :) if I did change the LEDs and didn't stuff it up, how well do you reckon it would go for resale?
Thanks Oobly, that's a handy tip to know before I do the whole board and freak out because the light isnt right haha