Asus N50VN backlight keyboard mod

Inspired by some other threads I’ve done to my old-timer N50VN a slightly different version of a backlight keyboard mod.

Keyboard was bought here ( For Asus G73 K52 Black Frame Black Backlit Us Laptop Keyboard 9J.N2j82.K01 0Kn0-Ek3us03 & Asus Laptop Laptop Keyboard). It’s a 348mm US layout keyboard for G73 model. It’s hard to get now if you want to buy it cheap. Mind that the ribbon powering LEDs is pointing the other way then the data cable. On eBay and aliexpress there are lots of other keyboards in this size, but they all have cables pointing the same way and that type of keyboard probably won’t work as it was reported in some other threads.

Version 1 of my mod was planned to be using 5V from USB. But then I noticed that those ports are powered on when notebook is in suspend mode and I always leave my laptop for the most of the day in this mode. So I went to eBay on hunt for some small slide switches. And this is what I found.

It’s a 1 pole, 2 positions slide switch that fits perfectly in the Kensington slot after cutting the side pins (it is even a bit to small for it with size of about 8 x 5 x 1.5mm) and has 2 positions. I mounted it with 3M double sided tape. It’s rather temporary mounting as it moves and shakes a bit when switching but for now I have no other ideas of mounting it. If someone has a good idea for it then please let me know.


After some testing I decided to use 3.3V as power source. With 5V the keyboard was too bright in darkness. So I found a nice place near the mini pci-e slot with 3.3V and big pads to easily solder the wires. From there I ran them through bottom side of laptop to the Kensington slot and mentioned switch and then to the other side of motherboard via some holes to keyboard.








Another thing that I wanted to avoid was soldering the powering wires to the keyboards ribbon. It would be a problem when I would have to remove keyboard or just disassemble the laptop for some reason. And also ribbon feels very delicate. So I needed some sort of connector. And what would be better than a connector made especially for ribbon wires? So again I searched on eBay and found this connector – a 4 pin ffc/fpc connector with 0.5mm pin spacing. It works perfectly although is a bit fat; those from Molex are smaller and fitting them in laptop would be easier. I used only 2 outer pins of this connector and for easy soldering I've cut 2 inner pins. It would be ideally if N50VN had a place on motherboard where this connector could be soldered but I suppose you can’t have everything


The most difficult part of this mod was soldering wires with connector and slide switch as I have only little experience in this and those parts are really small with very thin pins. But finally I made it at this is how it looks and works.








I forgot to take a picture of keyboard connected with laptop so I will update this post tomorrow.

Next version of mod (if I will ever do it) will be using a capacitive touch sensor, probably something like those sensors for Arduino that you can find on ebay - capacitive touch sensor | eBay. The only thing is that TTP223B chip used in those switch can’t source enough current so there will be a need of use a Mosfet transistor. Something like that has already been done by someone years ago but with different chip.
Sorry for my english