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What you´ll need :
5mm LED with flat top, 100 Ohm resistor and microswitch from ypur local radioshack, some wire of course.
Metal cap from a ball pen like this. I forgot to take a picture of mine before I destroyed it, but I found even better picture from Wikipedia 
. You´ll find the pen from closest supermarket for 2$.
It might be a bit tricky to get the cap off the plastic part, so you have to be innovative not to damage it.
Use drill bit or smth to support the cap from inside while you work on it.
Don´t get too exited with filing, you only need max 2x2 mm opening in it, if you make it bigger, light will blind you once it's installed.
Cut the cap with file so the LED fits excactly in it.
Darth Vader 
As the cap is slightly bigger than the LED, I used a drop of hot glue to secure the led inside the cap.
Best place for the light is between webcam and bezel screw mount (what ever it´s called ). <BR>I soldered the cathode (-) directly to LCD frame, wire from anode (+) goes to switch, from switch to the left USB 5V socket connection on the mobo. Sorry no detailed pictures about the wiring.
You´ll probably need LED explained also to refresh your memory, I know I did.
Next you need to place the microswitch somewhere. I choosed a gap between ethernet and USB socket. If u use the same switch as I did, you´ll need some really small drill bits and files to make that 2 x 3mm rectangular hole in the case.
As the case was too thick for the swich lever to extend out from it I had to do some grinding also on it.
I used adeshive glue to glue the switch, but as the contact surfaces are really tiny for such a heavy duty joint, I secured the switch with hot glue as well (see below).
Looking good. Lever extends from the case just enough for you to find it without looking at it.
Make the hole in the bezel AFTER you have mounted the LED, this way you´ll know exactly where you need to drill it. There ain´t much room to play around with the LED position to make it match with the hole.
Note that the cap is extending from the bezel just as much as the rubber pads, yet there´s enough light coming out of it to light up the keyboard.
A little visualization 
Really useful and cheap mod 
Last edited by indrex (2008-12-18 4:50:17 am)
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Nice and clean mod! Good documentation!
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That looks great! Nice mod and innovation there looks great in the end!
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Hi all
Well that's what I call, the more simple the more effective. That's a nice mod, I will try one also but maybe with 2 leds, since the black eee is very dark indeed.
Be happy if you can... 
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Very nice neat mod.
It might be just the camera angle, but it looks like quite a lot of light seems to be being fired forward toward the camera/user.
Did you consider trying to leave the hood at the front, stopping so much light being thrown forward...
Does it hit the palmrest when the lid is closed, or does it sit below the rubber screw covers in the lid?
I'd be tempted to maybe have one on each corner, hopefully getting a more even distribution of light.
Also, Have you tried putting a tiny bit of wet tissue over the LED to see if it looks better with the light being diffused a bit, I tried a mockup of a similar mod and found that the light seemed to get spread much more evenly when it was slightly diffused.
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DEADBEEF wrote:
It might be just the camera angle, but it looks like quite a lot of light seems to be being fired forward toward the camera/user.
Did you consider trying to leave the hood at the front, stopping so much light being thrown forward...
It is a camera issue. While using longer shutter time to get that "night" shot exposed, actual light source gets over exposed.
DEADBEEF wrote:
Does it hit the palmrest when the lid is closed, or does it sit below the rubber screw covers in the lid?
I'd be tempted to maybe have one on each corner, hopefully getting a more even distribution of light.
It's just about at the same level with screw rubbers and trust me, you'll only need one .
And I can tell that the light is spread evenly enough to find ANY key from your keyboard.
Last edited by indrex (2008-09-02 4:22:06 pm)
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indrex wrote:
...trust me, you'll only need one
And I can tell that the light is spread evenly enough to find ANY key from your keyboard.
Having owned multiple Thinkpads, while the light illuminates the keyboard enough to find any key it always seems to illuminate one area of the keyboard much more than the rest. Two slightly diffused lower power LEDs should give a much better spread of light across the whole keyboard. Making the whole thing much more asthetically pleasing when in use.
Definitely gonna use the pen top idea though for the LED shade. I've been trying to think of a good way of shading the light for a while now and didn't want to attempt the keyboard light mod before I'd decided on a satisfactory method of directing the light downwards. Your method seems like an ideal solution.
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very clever, I've been interested in something like this
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DEADBEEF wrote:
Definitely gonna use the pen top idea though for the LED shade. I've been trying to think of a good way of shading the light for a while now and didn't want to attempt the keyboard light mod before I'd decided on a satisfactory method of directing the light downwards. Your method seems like an ideal solution.
Thanks DEADBEEF. Pen top is the KEY of that mod. I ran several tests before I came to that. What comes to multiple LEDs, compared to any thinkpad - eeepc-s keyboard is much smaller to enlight and when I think about my 4400 mAh battery ... one LED is just enough 
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Nice work, excellent
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Very nice, very nice indeed !
I dont know what it is with the switch, but it looks very nicely installed, looks SO flush, it might look a bit more natural if it was filed down a bit, so it was protruding but 1/2 mm.
I might give this a go, my last attempt failed miserably 
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We need to talk these guys into making a compatible replacement Eee keyboard....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBBfmb6Dsh8
EDIT: oops, fluffed the URL.
Last edited by DEADBEEF (2008-09-02 11:03:59 pm)
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well done mate excellent work
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very nice! I've got the very same idea some time ago but didn't realized yet. I'm wondering whether it's possible connect LED to the webcam VDD, isn't it the same voltage as USB? Then it would be possible to turn on the LED via eeeTrayUtility (turning the webcam on) therefore HW switch wouldn't be necessary... or am I wrong?
Last edited by jet_ (2008-10-22 6:39:06 pm)
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First of all, not here to put down your work but would it be better if you just run some small fiber optical cables beneath the keyboard and use a 3mm LED with just a few hundred mcd or one of those surface mounted LED from a old cellphone at one end hidden somewhere beneath the case so it wouldn't irritate your eyes by the reflection?
just some **** came to my mine.
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I've just completed my keyboard illumination mod inspired by indrix. there are some pics http://www.jet.ic.cz/other/eee/mod/
vdd is taken from webcam so turning off/on is software controled, BUT webcam doesn't have enough power to work
Last edited by jet_ (2008-10-26 4:32:37 pm)
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I would of been tempted to remove one of the pillars , and put the light there, so it doest look like there is any change
) - 4gb ram - 30gb OCZ Vertex - GeForce 8400Offline
I plan to use UV light and have fluorescent keys so they will glow at night
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Do you lose that USB port or can you use both at the same time?
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USB port is not affected by the mod.
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LOVE IT! personally not my cup of tea, i have to have backlit, if anything that would distract me a little bit in a dark place, if i could get a decent backlit deal going on under that keyboard i would but that is definitely not going to be easy to do even if i can figure out a good way to do it.
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Crimsonspray wrote:
LOVE IT! personally not my cup of tea, i have to have backlit, if anything that would distract me a little bit in a dark place, if i could get a decent backlit deal going on under that keyboard i would but that is definitely not going to be easy to do even if i can figure out a good way to do it.
backlit would not illuminate the characters of the keys... you would need custom keys to allow light to transmit through an opaque etched character on the key
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yea exactly why i said its basically not going to happen....although one can dream
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nice mod, might do it myself if i have time
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