Slashdot Mirror
DIY Ambient Light Keyboard Kit
An anonymous reader writes "
Do you envy new Apple 17" PowerBook keyboard?
Here's keyboard light
kits for all most any keyboard no matter which OS you are using. There's
NINE choice of colors (Light Blue, Deep Blue, Hot Pink, Yellow, White, Purple,
Neon Green, Lime Green, and Red) available but unfortunately not coming with
light sensor.
"
Cool! can we combine colors? and do neat little effects with them? This could be so much fun in the computer lab late at night.
I'd really like to see a keyboard with a few programmable LEDs, or even better, a LCD screen. It'd be cool to have the memory/CPU use or something like that there.
But all I see instead is keyboards with annoying power buttons I tend to press in the least inconvenient moment. I just don't get it, what's the point of having it there? As if I needed to turn the computer on and off every 5 minutes.
How long before we can have multicoloured ones? And then, how long before someone comes up with a cool hack to make the lights flash!
Lucky its not microsoft made, or you'd see patches coming out from day one to prevent script kiddies from taking over the control of the lights and annoying you senseless.
this kit would work best with apple keyboards - they are translucent plastic and would let you discern the key legend in the dark. on a regular keyboard it just lights the gutters between the keys.
But the PB keyboard backlighting illuminates each letter on the surface of the key, not just the space between/around the keys.... in a low-light situation, _that's_ the real benefit... seeing which key you're about ot press, not just seeing a field of silhouetted key blanks.
Don't hit me with that chain again.
Well, their servers are slashdotted already.
I hope they can sell some kits to help pay for their troubles.
Huh?
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:fzTelghCGyoC: www.neontrim.com/keyboard.html+Computer+Keyboard+L ight+Kits!&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8
both the cache and the link in the article appear to be extremely slow
There are 5 comments up as I post this, and the site is already being slashdotted -- it's horridly slow. Last night I noticed on the Guerilla News Network story that the poster had gone out and asked the site admins if he/she could link to them prior to submitting it to the editors.
It is relatively well-understood that /. cannot mirror sites, for a large number of reasons. Moreover, the admins here are taxed (well, maybe...) as is, and aren't willing to fire off emails asking permission to post a link to someone's site every time they get a story that ends up on the frontpage. Nor should they have to.
Perhaps, though, we as posters could be mature and responsible? Asking for permission before DOS'ing someone's site via a link here would at the least be polite.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
The server seems dead, but here is a mirror, be nice to it. http://www.moderngeek.com/keyboardlights/ This does not compare the the powerbook lighting at ALL, it looks cheap :p The powerbook lights up the lettes on the keys, and this just lights up behind the keys.
Close up
Neon
Keyboard
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Ok, take it easy on me here...
pic1
pic2
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
fully illuminated keyboard, $99
Auravision EluminX Illuminated Keyboard
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
OK. Excuse my if I wrong, but wouldnt ambient light be well, ambient light?
This is NOT ambient light. This is backlighting. Hell, my keyboard is being lit by ambient light right now, and it has been since I bought it. And so has every keyboard I've ever owned.
In fact, everything in my house is lit by ambient light. Well, you get the idea.
For a website that touts itself as "News for nerds", maybe a little lexical verification would be in order, since fact-checking is apparently out of the question.
arrrgghhh...[struggles with demon hand]....must....change....urls....argggghhh
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I think that the real rwason to envy anything that apple sells is the graphics support. If you look at ANY other laptops on the market, do they have decent graphics? NO. The powerbook has a slightly dulled GeForce 4 w/ 64MB VRAM. That's better than the card on any desktop from a major PC retailer for under $1000. Also, if you ever look at the specs for a cheap ($700 or less) brand name PC, they have their graphics built into the motherboard. Yet they still claim that their P4 will make games dreamy and your downloads go faster. It's disgusting.
Help I'm a rock.
How 'bout this?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
First, the site is already slashdotted...
However, there were a few convenient mirror images and a similar product from thinkgeek.
Honestly though, isn't this just something to take to a LAN party or something; that is, just another way to mod your PC. The light from the monitor (at least CRTs) is enought to illuminate the keys for the most part. And if you are spending enough time with the computer that you are typing in the dark, you shouldn't have to look at the keyboard much anyway, right? This is cool-looking, but useless aside from wow-factor. Especially if you don't already have translucent keys, in which case only the between-keys area is lit anyway.
Real Geeks can type in the dark anyway, this is just another add on for your thirty one thousand one hundred and thirty seven machine.
To get past that, simply right-click, and while still holding down the right-mouse button, press space to get past the alert and the context menu will appear.
There are a few sites that this doesn't work on, and due to the current status of their server I can't test it on their page.
Still, I'd have to refuse to buy from them--using JavaScript for anything other than unobtrusive rollovers is, quite simply, evil.
I was planning a similar, modulo the ambiant light sensor, inspried by this article. But instead of using an EL cable powered by battery, I want to use a few LED powered by tapping the keyboard controller. The PS/2 specification call for 300 mW on the port. Depending on how much is unused by the KB controller, somebody could probably wire 4 or 5 more LED and place them strategically for the best effect.
:wq
From the article:
> Light Up Your Keyboard!
>
> This is how the finished product looks!
>
> [Big Black Square (y'know, graphic that didn't
> load) that looks like someone snapped a photo in
> the dark.]
>
> This one done by Wolfman at Virtual-Hideout.net
> with one of our Kits, with our 5V inverter chip
> that ties right into the keyboard and just 4' of
> Neon Trim. Check out his review!
>
> [Another Big Black Square that looks like
> someone snapped a photo in the dark.]
>
> This Dell was done with one of our Kits, with
> our 5V inverter chip that ties right into the
> keyboard and just 4' of Neon Trim.
> (Courtesy of Eric Smith, Carrollton, Texas)
Hmm, first page I've seen that shows you how their product *doesn't* work!
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Pretty soon we'll have a story about some guy who put a VTEC sticker on his keyboard and replaced the cable with a thicker one, and claims it increased his typing speed by 30 wpm...
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
I've put the illuminated keyboard on my wishlist on amazon.com. I'll probably buy one for my desktop as I'm revamping the video card and monitor already later this year, so why not get a new keyboard, too, while I'm at it?
But I have a Powerbook G4 already, and I've been waiting for backlighting for a LONG time. And when they finally come out with it, it won't fit my computer!
So where, I say, are the upgrade kits? I've been looking for a long time. Seems like something like this should be a shoo-in for an upgrade product...
i am a soviet space shuttle
There are so many new Slashdot stories featuring case mod kits and the like. These are filed under the 'hardware' subject which sometimes contains actual legitimate, interesting stories about hardware, as opposed to stories about glowing things which crack babies attach to their hardware in order to make it glow.
Apple introduces a somewhat practical keyboard which illuminates when dark, so that the symbols on the keys are readily visible. This is nice, and seems like a useful feature.
The case mod subject/response here is a type of glow strands to be routed between the keyboard keys so that the spaces between them light up, which is useful if you have no tactile sensation of touch in your fingers and therefore don't know where the keys are. If you do know where the keys are, but are just looking for the key symbols, you're out of luck because PC keyboard keys are opague and don't benefit in any practical, functional manner from this mode of illumination.
Therefore, IT IS A WASTE OF TIME, equivalent in absurdity to cargo cults fabricating mock stick and canvas airplanes. "Almost like a Macintosh!" - when you were a kid, did you also fasten cardboard cards with clothespins to the spokes of your bicycle in order to make it sound like a moped?
Couldn't there be a separate subject for case mods? That way I could filter this stuff right out. I propose the icon representing the subject should be a baboon's bright red arse, the color of which also serves no functional purpose but nevertheless appears to attract other baboons.
But only if it has Ogg Vorbis support.
Oh, and plays Divx movies.
Anyone remember Apricots from the 80's ? They had an alphanumeric lcd with programmable function keys under it, neat idea, no idea why it didn't catch on.
Because the keyboards weighed 156 pounds each, and after a few hours of use the surface temperature approached the boiling point.
Bit of a showstopper, that.
I write in my journal
yeesh, why would I want to backlight all the gunk that gets trapped in my keybord over all the years? Why don't we just make it a blacklight so any mystery stains (like, you know, coffee) can glow?
And why manufacture a mod kit, why not just build a keyboard?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
first off these look the best on a black keyboard..
BUT, if you are the type to leave your computer on all the time I would paas on it.. these "light wires" have a very VERY short lifespan. they will start to get dark-spots and even lose sections of the "wire" to darkness..
I have used lots of this stuff, and seen even more of it in poser cars that after only 100 hours of on time they start looking like crap. In this use as indirect lighting I would gather that the darkspots and other "failure" modes of the wire will not be as bothersome.. but when a customer comes back 3 weeks later with their trick case bitching that the light wires you routed a nice slot around the edges for and looked Schweet when they pickked it up look like hell.... you stop reccomending a product..
I personally reccomend staying away from this light wires based products until someone starts manufacturing something that has a much better lifespan.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...but all the crap, gook, bread grumps, cat hairs, and all the other assorted nastiness that tends to collect there. Eww, thanks but no thanks.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Oh, hooray! Now that I can illuminate the gutters between my keys, I (as well as my friends and family) can see with perfect clarity all the dust and hair that builds up in there. How delightful!
Although I admit the extra five words probably came from the Pepsi can I glued to my tower's exhaust port.
When I finally save up enough box tops to get a "Type-R" monitor sticker and a genuine copy of a fake Recaro executive chair I'll be the fastest damned typist in the world.
You'll probably waste your time doing shit like *practicing.*
Hoser.
KFG
...this one I'm typing on right now is a fakey MII, not as good as a true Model M, but it's way better than most keyboards you can buy. Me and my buds call them "bludgeons" because they are heavy and built tough.
I would LOVE a mod where the keys were replaced with clear keys and backlit from the inside, but I would rather have a keyboard that feels good than one that looks good, and I'd be afraid the mod might interfere with that great click-click-click.
Like the guy who runs http://www.modelm.org/ says, TYPE HARD OR GO HOME!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If you really want to improve your typing speed, spend a lot of time in IRC. I used to think IRC was a timesink. Wrong. It improved my typing speed to the point where I now have my first decent job since the end of the Dot-Bomb era.
Now, if I could just fit that spoiler on my Model MII I might just crack the 60wpm barrier. Oh yeah...gotta paint it bright yellow and put those Kanji stickers all over them. Heh heh heh...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It's really high tech. You place little magnetic loops and wire coils under several keys (selected by frequency of keypresses and desired brightness of illumination) and as you type, it charges a small capacitor that drives the light.
Oh, and I just made that up.
More seriously, though, another reason to put the power button on the keyboard is so you can put the computer under the desk or somewhere else that's not very accessible, and you only need to access the machine when you're feeding it CDs (or not even then, if you've got a USB CD drive.) This also lets you make the room quieter by hiding the PC in an accoustic-shielding box, or in a closet or in the next room with long cables.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
--been thinking about this. You know how some places when they are under a drought water restriction, they have odd/even days for watering? People with odd numbered addresses on one day, even the next, and so on. Keeps the water supply from getting slashdotted.
What would be nice is an honor system "when to click over to a hot new link" regimen.
Something like this, open for review and tweaking. You look at when the story was posted, note the time. Wait to the next full quarter hour before the onslaught begins. That's your start point. Here's how it gets divvied up. Now you take your real name-you only have to do this once, then remember the number-you do a normal letter/number substitution, first letter of first name, first letter of last name, transpose to the correct numbers, add them together, add again if double digits, until you have a single digit. Just a normal numerology deal there with the alphabet, 1 -26 numbers. That final added together digit is your permanent static name number, that you use with the "time" number to click over. Every 5 minute increment from the article post time start point full quarter hour, counts as a digit starting with 1, etc. When your static name number matches your honor system time-digit number for the article, then it's cool for you to click over.
This way it gets spread out better, instead of all at once when the article is posted. Voluntary non-anarchy, being polite to the server, and maybe everyone can actually get to the link without it crashing the server.
It's slashdotted, but I suspect that it's the electro-luminescent vendor that I visited a few weeks ago.
True. For the last week or so, I've been using a keyboard with the keyboard drawer closed because I'm in too constrained of a space to sit back all the way. Those little nubs under your index fingers are there for a reason, you know.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I agree.
:)
I have an ancient AT&T keyboard (For all practical purposes an IBM Model M - Heck, it might even be a rebranded M. It definately has click-clack-action keys. No power buttons on this keyboard. And my machine's front is aimed back towards the wall, making the power button quite difficult to reach.
Is this a problem?
Nope. BIOS for shutdown, Wake-On-Keyboard for turning back on. If I want my machine to boot, I just mash on the keyboard with my palm.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Don't know about their networking equipment, but I've heard lots of good things about MS joysticks, and MS makes great mice.
The scroll wheel - Microsoft's single true innovation that I can think of. I originally dismissed it as an M$ gimmick, now I go crazy with any mouse that doesn't have a scrollwheel.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Dell Inspiron 8200.
Came with a GeForce4 Go (The "slightly dulled" GeForce 4) back in August. The GF4 Go has been available in Inspiron 8x00 series laptops for quite some time before that.
In fact, the upgradablity of 8000 and 8100 units to the GF4 Go made Slashdot in early summer.
And as another poster mentioned, the Inspirons have a Radeon 9000 available, for those who are into the V8-in-a-Yugo thing. (Referring to ATi's great hardware accompanied by crap drivers, not to the rest of the system.)
Also, your oh-so-wonderful 17" PowerBook only has a 1440x900something screen. The Inspiron 8000 had a 1600x1200 display available at least a year and a half ago - Probably two or more years. While the wide screen of the PBs is nice for watching movies, that 900 pixels vertical resolution is crap for anything else. (Viewing PDFs, web pages, word processing. Most games aren't catered to widescreen either.)
BTW, the GF4 Go, which is just a 4MX, cannot be considered a true GeForce 4. All it really is is a GeForce 2 running at much higher clockrates.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Er, you mean INSECURE server of their own right?
We've heard of people getting stolen from paypal accounts, and paypal didn't do anything about it.
They say it's secure, but don't back it up at all legally, so you might as well just send cash in the mail. I'm not trying to say they should keep sending info unencrypted, that's just stupid, but it's a lot cheaper/easier/safer to setup apache for SSL, and get a cheap php shopping cart script.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I have an MS ergonomic/natural keyboard at home, and I have an Apple one for my mac as well.
The MS one is not as nice as the Model M's, but good enough.
The mac one scares me. When you split it (it is adjustable) the tgb and yhn keys, where the split occurs if I remember right, look like they are hanging over a ledge and that typing on them would cause them to fall right off.
I have.