It came!

[Insy]

I ordered this WASD keyboard on Thursday, and it came yesterday even though I only had them use priority mail. It's pretty nice though I have one problem with it: the blue leds are bright as hell. Maybe I have to go in and cut them out and replace with dimmer leds or something else. Any recommendations? So far I just put a torn piece of a playing card on top of them and it dims them pretty well, though it's not a very permanent solution.

[AKIMbO]

Taste the rainbow!

Color the LED bulbs with a black pen.

[Rafen]

Nice! I really like the colors. You could just color the leds with a pen or marker like AKIMbo said.

[Insy]

Most people wouldn't see it, but the colors are the keys I type on with each finger. Yellow = pinkies, green = ring, blue = middle, orange = left index, red = right index. I rest my fingers on awef jio;

I took touch typing classes as a kid, but we always had our hands covered with cloth so we all developed our own strategies. I wrote a program that would estimate the average distance traveled with various fingering positions, and mine is quite a bit more efficient than regular qwerty when used against random combinations of the most frequently occurring letters in the English language, and also against regular text.

It's worth noting that while Dvorak is faster when you assume the fingering is on the 'home row', but if I were to use my home row position on Dvorak it would be even less efficient than qwerty. Who knew?

[rowdy]

That is an interesting layout, good colour choice too.

But I have a feeling it would set my OCD off

[dorkvader]

The "proper" way would be to change the resistors, but they are surface mounted to the controllerboard, so it'd actually be rather hard. Because of this, I would do the pen method.

Or you can do what I did and put spare keycaps over them.

[rowdy]

Or a semi-transparent keyboard badge, perhaps?  Looks like there is lots of room (apart from the WASD logo) above where the LEDs are.

[TheProfosist]

Is that the actual colors because from what i remember WASDs red is very orangeish but your are a deep red.

[PointyFox]

Try developing cataracts.

[MarkPharaoh]

Those keycaps make me irrationally angry, lol.

[Insy]

The reds are fairly deep in color, a good contrast to the orange. I love it because it does set off peoples surprise, including my own, every time anyone looks at it. And of course there is a reason for the colors, even if it's not a very good one. I'm still getting used to the space bar being slightly higher than my old keyboard, and the first mm of travel being much lighter. All in all though, I think it may be an improvement over my 1996 rubber dome keyboard I'd had for 16 years that cost $7.

[Insy]

Because of this, I would do the pen method.

Color the LED bulbs with a black pen.

How opaque are sharpies on leds, anyway? It would seem to me that black might be a bit much. Is it not too much with how bright the LEDs are? I guess it's not like I'd be painting them with black paint.

Right now I have this cut up piece of playing card on top of them, and that's dimming them quite a bit so maybe I should just tape it down, heh. Kinda ghetto, though.

[fohat.digs]

You can use a hole punch on something like a bumper sticker to get nice circles, although they will be big.

I can't figure out why - in hell - modern board makers put those retina-destroying LEDs on keyboards.

Nobody uses a keyboard in direct sunlight, come on! Until a few years ago they were mild soft unassuming green, why change something that is just right?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The "proper" way would be to change the resistors

Do correct value resistors cost too much money or something?

I peeled the hideous label off my Realforce only to find that the LEDs don't fill the holes, but instead the holes are empty and the LEDs sit right down inside the keyboard. (Fortunately the label is really thick and strong and went back on again almost as if nothing happened, barring the knife wounds.)

My monitor has a mid-blue power LED that's not too bright (though for fun I've turned it off), and current Dell keyboards have deep blue LEDs that are also perfectly tolerable, so why expensive keyboards get this wrong, I don't know. Plenty of devices have blue LEDs that don't suck. Also, those solar-powered garden lights with tricolour LEDs have a curious property that the blue output is much dimmer than the green or red phases of the cycle. Maybe newer ones have fixed that.

On the other hand, Cherry G30-8000 green LEDs barely show up ...

[dorkvader]

The "proper" way would be to change the resistors

Do correct value resistors cost too much money or something?

I peeled the hideous label off my Realforce only to find that the LEDs don't fill the holes, but instead the holes are empty and the LEDs sit right down inside the keyboard. (Fortunately the label is really thick and strong and went back on again almost as if nothing happened, barring the knife wounds.)

My monitor has a mid-blue power LED that's not too bright (though for fun I've turned it off), and current Dell keyboards have deep blue LEDs that are also perfectly tolerable, so why expensive keyboards get this wrong, I don't know. Plenty of devices have blue LEDs that don't suck. Also, those solar-powered garden lights with tricolour LEDs have a curious property that the blue output is much dimmer than the green or red phases of the cycle. Maybe newer ones have fixed that.

On the other hand, Cherry G30-8000 green LEDs barely show up ...

No, resistors are cheap. Perhaps $0.09 if you get really expensive or nice 1% tolerance ones. You can get cheap 15% or 20% tolerance resistors that will work just fine for even less.

The hard part is desoldering the resistors, and knowing a good value to replace them with. In my WASDkeyboard, the resistorsa re surface-mounted: A pain to desolder! Any higher resistance value will allow less currant to flow through, and the LED's will be dimmer. If you pick one that's just a little bit higher, you probably won't notice the change. If you pick a value that's twice as much, you will probably see a difference clearly. Getting it right might take a few tries.

What you could to is add another resistor in series with the LED. Finding a place to put it might be hard, but you can get away with thelarger (and easy to work with) through hole resistors if you do that.

You can find some LEDs that are higher voltage (and thus lower current) or lower brightness that might work, and will be cheap (under $.50 probably) and might work.

Perhaps there are people on the forum that can offer modification services, and will help you.

I believe WASD is making the LED's dimmer on his version two which should come out before the end of the year.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I meant, do the correct value resistors cost more money than the resistors fitted? i.e. would it cost the manufacturer more money to have dimmer LEDs?

[dorkvader]

I meant, do the correct value resistors cost more money than the resistors fitted? i.e. would it cost the manufacturer more money to have dimmer LEDs?

No, especially with the quantities they order in.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That's what I figured. I wonder if there is a financial reason at all, or whether it's just complete cluelessness? (Why did Dell move from hard, stain-proof casings on their laptops to a textured plastic that absorbed grease from your hand in minutes? I think they've since found a compromise material that doesn't suck, although I liked the old hard metallic finishes myself.)

[mushupork]

scotch tape sandwich with sharpee coloring in between is non permanent change I used to cut the glare from the LEDs in my computer speakers.

[WhiteFireDragon]

Most people wouldn't see it, but the colors are the keys I type on with each finger. Yellow = pinkies, green = ring, blue = middle, orange = left index, red = right index. I rest my fingers on awef jio;

You have a very unique way for a finger layout. How is it possible you cover that you cover half of the bottom row with just the right index finger and still have comfort typing? I would think that it's a very awkward stretch of the index finger for the period.

[rowdy]

Although I can touch type if I have to, with programming it is almost as many symbols as alphanumeric characters.  Over the years I have come up with a weird kinda 6 finger typing style that might come close to the OP in some areas.

I guess unless you formally touch type, everyone's style will be different.

[Insy]

Most people wouldn't see it, but the colors are the keys I type on with each finger. Yellow = pinkies, green = ring, blue = middle, orange = left index, red = right index. I rest my fingers on awef jio;

You have a very unique way for a finger layout. How is it possible you cover that you cover half of the bottom row with just the right index finger and still have comfort typing? I would think that it's a very awkward stretch of the index finger for the period.

My right index floats just over mnj, then b is rarely used and bmnjh are almost never used directly after one another. You're right though, it does make for some annoyances when trying to hit a period or comma right after a word that ends with one of those letters, slowing me down slightly. I made another post looking into how to get a thumb key or two on a keyboard, so I could use my right thumb for something and fix that little flaw of my fingering.