Has anyone ever modded a.....

davido_labido

davido_labido

davido_labido

Soldato
Joined
17 Sep 2012
Posts
4,277
Location
Derby
... LED Cherry switch?

my keyboard has blue (ARGH!!!!!) led's in the switches, at a quick glance, they look like standard 3mm leds?

Can it be done?
has anyone ever modded one?
was it easy(ish)?

i want it orange. =(

oh, btw its this keyboard...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Osmium Mechanical Gaming Keyboard £109.99
Total : £119.89 (includes shipping : £8.25).



the switches look like this :
8UCmgV8.jpg
 
hmm, depends on the voltage the LEDs run at, my best guess is it is 5V that run off the usb power.

Then yes probably desolder the LEDs, I would not advise winging it with such an expensive keyboard (Like snipping of the diode and botching another onto the legs)
 
I have seen it done to a Sidewinder X4 (not quite the same deal I know) but they had to take the PCB out of the board, de-solder the LED's and solder on new ones of equal voltage etc. Worked a charm though, but probably took some time.

I should imagine that it would be a bit more difficult on a mechanical keyboard.

However if you master it, you could find it to be quite a money spinner :D

I would personally pay through the nose for a Mionix Zibal 60 with white LED's :(
 
Last edited:
Would be a long soldering job, but defiantly possible Ive already changed all the LED's inside a M95 mouse to green leds. A keyboard however.. hmm a lot more led's to solder.

Thinking about it, the easy route didn't razer make a BlackWidow BF3 edition with orange backlight also pretty sure the ducky shine comes in orange. Few options I guess.

*Did some digging around for you, came across this it is a razer blackwidow but the pcb layout and LED setup should be similar.

 
Last edited:
Blues are usually 2.5-3.5V, orange are 2-2.1V, so all you need to do is to check your LEDs voltage and buy similar-voltage orange LEDs, or find resistors and replace them with calculated ones for orange, or keep higher voltage making orange LEDs brighter with probably shorter lifespan.
 
ive done loads of other keyboards and stuff which are usually just a line of square LED's on a PCB. They were easy.

That video shows me pretty much everything i need to do though i think.

il have a look to see how mine comes apart (this keyboard is only a week old... looks like the warranty is going be void again :D)
 
I'd imagine that a board that uses a single led per key would use some form of constant current regulator rather than resistors to limit led current otherwise the thing would be dissipating a lot of energy as heat. The good thing about this is that a straight blue to orange swap should work just fine.

If this is the case you should not mix orange and blue and especially not test it out with just a few oranges in place as they'll blow immediately as they'll take all the current die to their lower forward voltage.
 
Tealc said:
I'd imagine that a board that uses a single led per key would use some form of constant current regulator rather than resistors to limit led current otherwise the thing would be dissipating a lot of energy as heat. The good thing about this is that a straight blue to orange swap should work just fine.

If this is the case you should not mix orange and blue and especially not test it out with just a few oranges in place as they'll blow immediately as they'll take all the current die to their lower forward voltage.
Click to expand...

but if i do all of the keys will they be ok? im really not that good on the resistors/voltage/anythingelse front i usually order packs of led's which come bundled with the correct resistors.

(for previous keyboards ive done, its worked fine, but im really unsure about this one as it would be around 115 leds id have to do?

and thanks for that link acme, saved it and will read it properly when ive sobered up a little :D

p.s ive stalked you on youtube and replied to your comment about the lights been dimmed the wrong way :p
 
Last edited:
davido_labido said:
and thanks for that link acme, saved it and will read it properly when ive sobered up a little :D

p.s ive stalked you on youtube and replied to your comment about the lights been dimmed the wrong way :p
Click to expand...

When you've sobered up i'm sure you'll think better of spending £70 and hours of your life changing the backlighting colour on your keyboard too :D (I may be wrong)

And yes, yes you are right. I am a silly sausage :(
 
acme15 said:
When you've sobered up i'm sure you'll think better of spending £70 and hours of your life changing the backlighting colour on your keyboard too :D (I may be wrong)

And yes, yes you are right. I am a silly sausage :(
Click to expand...

hells no, ive spent more, on worse (took me 3 attempts to change the lights on my old razer imperator from blue to green.

over 200 quid i spent on the bloody things, cuz i couldnt get them to work right after i put them back together, once id done it, i didnt like it either -.-

now i have a Tt level10 M that im going to mod..... soon.
 
davido_labido said:
hells no, ive spent more, on worse (took me 3 attempts to change the lights on my old razer imperator from blue to green.

over 200 quid i spent on the bloody things, cuz i couldnt get them to work right after i put them back together, once id done it, i didnt like it either -.-

now i have a Tt level10 M that im going to mod..... soon.
Click to expand...

Sure is dedication to modding right there. If you do re-solder the leds throw up a thread on it, would be great to see the outcome.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom