LED bleed and viewing angle

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Just noticed on my FILCO that the LEDs don't bleed: light from the Num Lock LED doesn't shine out through the Caps Lock and Scroll Lock LEDs and vice versa. I don't know whether Diatec or Costar intended for their sup-$100 keyboards to have properly shielded LEDs or whether it's just an unintended bonus with the design of the PCB and case.

Also, the LED viewing angle is pretty decent and with the LED appearing relatively evenly lit. I was disappointed though with the lacklustre LEDs in the Spacesaver.

Not only is it both tacky and annoying for LEDs to be unshielded (especially with network hardware when you're not 100% sure which LEDs are actually lit), but I dislike the aesthetics of poor optics in LED housings: I prefer LEDs to be as close as possible to a block of solid colour, instead of the watery, refracted appearance you normally get.

One little touch that would perfect keyboards would be deep green LEDs instead of the olde worlde yellow-green. My "old" Pentax Optio S5z ultracompact has a nifty power button with an integrated bicolour LED, showing as deep green for still image and red for dictophone, which—give or take bleed around the edges of the button—appears as a solid disc of perfectly even light. (When connected to the PC it looks odd as the primary status LED that shows for USB mass storage active appears positively yellow compared to the green of the power button.)

Couple more things to add to my perfect-keyboard wishlist.

Thus ends my sad late-night ramble

(sup: opposite of sub; see HTML …)

(not sure vice versa really works when you have a combination, such as three LEDs …)

[EverythingIBM]

Old IBM model Ms have very large LEDs...


They're perfectly bright for me, any brighter and it would be too intrusive.

EDIT:
I made the mistake to thinking you were referring to Model Ms, oops.

Guess I'm just crazy.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Some normal LEDs:



What I want to see:



My camera's bicolour power LED has this, as does one bank of LEDs on our washing machine. It's possible to get good optics out of an LED housing to give pure colour without refraction, but most people don't bother. FILCO come pretty close to perfect with their green LEDs; hard to tell with the blue LEDs without burning away a layer of your retina. I've never seen a FILCO linear up close.

[EverythingIBM]

Well I guess you have a few options:
#1 swap the LED external clear cover with one that's not frosted to remove diffraction (not advised).
#2 move the LED closer to the end of the housing
#3 get new LEDs that are more powerful.

Although, LEDs that don't have that viewing angle really hurt the eyes... most of the time the outside plastic is frosted to achieve a more dim glow.

So, better to be not-so-bright than insanely bright that it hurts the eyes.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

[citation needed]

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Not perfect, but indeed, FILCO LEDs are some of the best. I think red LEDs always were very good though. Apart from the dated dome-shaped casing, the red LEDs on my BBC Micro are also absolutely perfect in intensity, pure red surface from every angle.

I always wished that the MX blue and MX brown keyboards came with red LEDs just like the BBC Micro, but my attempts at soldering at school (years ago) typically yielded "Dolly Partons", my tech teacher's term for the large mounds of solder in poor solder jobs.

I'm not about to break my keyboard so that I can have vintage LEDs in it

The Leopolds should come with programmable tri-colour LEDs so that you can choose ...

That said, with USB you can't even control the regular LEDs without affecting the state of caps lock etc. Microsoft, Always Stepping Backwards ...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I wanted surface uniformity and absence of light bleed, not brightness!

It would therefore follow that I greatly dislike light bleed in backlit keyboards. Seeing all the light bleed out from around the keys makes the keyboard feel like typical cheap ass real-world technology instead of something truly high-tech. I don't mind light-up key legends (obviously with good surface uniformity, unlike reality where the letters are all half-lit), but light escaping everywhere out of a professional-grade machine such as a MacBook pro just looks sloppy.

(Sorry, I watched too much Star Trek for my own good, and now I don't recognise any of reality as being an acceptable level of technology.)

The backlit trackball looks neat though -- I've not yet overcome my resistance to buying a trackball, but I do like them.

[msiegel]

I watched too much Star Trek for my own good, and now I don't recognise any of reality as being an acceptable level of technology.

that is how s*** gets done!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It might if I were clever. Besides, the consensus here seems to be that ~100% of people couldn't care less about LED appearance. Which figures It's always good to know that, on any forum, I'm more sad than all the other inhabitants.

[msiegel]

LED appearance

the same thing annoys me, especially in network equip as mentioned earlier

just not nearly as much as having a poorly designed keyboard

[nanu]

Shouldn't it be possible to mod water-clear LEDs for uniform output by merely sanding down the domes? Getting rid of the typical 15° lens is the point, along with diffusing the light by creating a matte surface texture. Then it's a matter of closing up light leaks in the (lack of an) installation design, if any.

Alternatively, for plastic labels or inlays, it may be possible to apply light diffusion film (something I've never tried).