I began working on my wireless keyboard's EL wire illumination. I posted earlier asking for suggestions on how to do this, and this is what I came up with: I cut a hole next to the internal batteries that are shielded behind the battery cover. There is just enough room to fit 2 AAA batteries that will power my inverter and EL wire. This will make it so that I can change the batteries and just use chargeable batteries. Therefore, I will only have to swap out the batteries in order to repower the EL wire. L337 huh? I'm waiting for 5 more feet of EL wire, so that I can fully illuminate the keys. The keyboard looks untouched, since everything I have cut was internal. There has been NO damage. Thank god! I am typing on it right now! The tools\materials I have used so far: -Dremel to cut the hole in the keyboard. -Soldering iron to connect the EL wire to the invertor -AAA battery powered inverter with switch -EL wire -A lot of research Here's a picture of how it looks so far in the back with the battery shield opened: Here's a picture of it shielded. You can see the hole I made for the switch to go in: Here's a full frontal picture of the keyboard: (note: the EL wire hasn't been added yet. These are the primary stages of this mod. I'll update with pictures once I add the EL wire. So far, the hard part is over) Let me know what you think!
The batteries last 20-25 hours. I'm going to use rechargeable batteries, and have four, so that some can be charging, while the others are in use. It's as easy as opening the back cover to change the batteries, and It never interferes with the batteries that operate the keyboard. This means that I can change them while the computer and keyboard are in use without losing a signal to the PC. This mod took a lot of preparation.
It isn't as bright as it could be, but definitly acceptable. AAA batteries are the only size that would fit. I'll post pics when it becomes fully illuminated. So far... Stage 2 has been completed. I have successfully installed the batteries, and the invertor. The EL wire is hanging out, because I'm waiting to recieve the actual wire that I am going to use. So far so good! It was a bitch squeezing the invertor in, but You can't even tell that anything is in the keyboard. looks perfectly new. The battery cover completely covers up all the batteries. The switch looks good too! Here's the batteries inside and uncovered. You can see the EL wire is illuminated. SUCESS! . Heres the batteries covered with the switch showing:
will 2 AAA batteries be enough to power an el strip and inverter? cause 2 AAA batteries only put out 3 volts altogether... and doesnt an inverter run off of 12?
are those keys clear hmm maybe i should figure out how to make my zippy el keyboard wireless heh nothing like convergent evolution
