UL30 Backlit Keyboard Mod

Gonna give this a shot tonight on my U41JF. Wish me luck.

 

hey guys found this extremely interesting. i have an asus u36, keyboard looks the same. how can i check if the keyboard is the same

 

Was someone able to connect the N61 Keyboard to an easy 5volt point which doesn't require disassemble the whole notebook.

Thanks you

 

Thanks everyone who contributed to this thread! I just finished my own backlit keyboard mod and it looks great!

 

I was looking though the post, has anyone done this mod on a U50F? I ordered the U50VG backlit keyboard which is the exact same keyboard.

Here's a picture of openings under the keyboard, and I don't know where a +5v opening would be located

Spoiler

 

Wow, thank you for this post. I think this might have just pushed me to get this laptop

 

I have 2 of these UL30a laptops, one is my wife's, and the other I just bought for resale which had a broken LCD panel and I just finished repairing it a couple days ago.

Then today I just got in my ILLUMINATED keyboard for wifey's UL30 and I had of course found this thread in my quest to find a way to wire up a keyboard switchable 5v power source.

Well, after some searching and studying, I have figured out how I am going to be able to FULLY switch the power from keyboard. I have verified some parts of my theory and not yet others, but this should work. I am going to use this UL30a I bought for resale as a test monkey and will use it as my platform to verify that this works.

I do have the ASUS ATK Hotkey Utility installed, and the ATK On-screen display tool installed, and not sure if it matters, but I have the Num LK setting in my BIOS set to 'Disabled' (BIOS ver UL30Aas.212 installed).

With these settings, I can successfully toggle the FN + Num Lk setting on/off, and physically get an LED on the left side of the top case (by the left power button, the padlock 1 LED) to toggle on/off with it.

For those who do not know, the Num LK setting functions as follows on the UL30a: When the Num LK is DISABLED (padlock 1 LED off), the keyboard functions as normal. When the Num LK setting is ENABLED (Padlock 1 LED on), the keyboard still functions just as it normally would EXCEPT that when you now hold down the FN key, the number keys (7-8-9-0-u-i-o-p-j-k-l-;-m-,- .-/) function as numbers and + - / * only.

But when you release the FN key, the characters all go back to normal keyboard function at all other times. Then if you disable it with FN + Num LK (Padlock 1 LED off), it basically only disables Num LK from being able to work for when you hold the FN key down.

So this is the perfect hardware toggle since the setting will not affect most users functioning of the computer (unless you really needed/wanted to have Num LK - ENABLED at the same time as you wanted the keyboard illum to be off).

Now that we have an adequate trigger source, we just need an acceptable relay in which the trigger coil can be activated with a low 10mA current.

See here:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=HE3621A0510


This reed relay will be perfect. I can disable the LED from the circuit and connect in this relay primary trigger coil to it instead, so that I can effectively switch another power source from it, like a USB +5v source (as many have used here) which has the known higher current availability (500mA) than the driver circuit for the Num LK LED has. I measured the amp draw of my ASUS illuminated keyboard and it draws a steady 170-171mA current.

I just thought I'd post this here to see if there were any thoughts on this that I may be overlooking. I'm not a super-genius with electronics by any means, but I have done quite a few cool hack jobs over the years, and this seems like a slick and easy hack that should easily be doable and work good.

Here is one referencing article in which this idea I purpose was inspired (but he used scroll lock instead):

Make - Triggering a relay from PC

So far, I have not found any caveats to this plan that would affect me since this toggle only affects the enabling of the FN on-the-fly Num LK-on feature.

I am waiting for the relay to get here before I can finish this, but I will post back with my results after I get this installed and have a chance to confirm full function.



**EDIT**

Potential Caveat with easy workaround:

It looks like I will most likely need to build a simple relay driver circuit to make sure this is reliable (not hammer too much on the LED circuit).

See here: http://www1.electusdistribution.com.au/images_uploaded/relaydrv.pdf

But first, before I decide for sure whether or not I need to build a beefier relay driver circuit, what I am going to do is first break into the LED driver circuit with my multimeter in series and measure the current flow (through the led + led resistor) to see how close to 10mA it is now, because the relay I ordered has a 500 ohm coil and draws 10mA at 5v. If the LED driver circuit is already close to that supply, then I may not even need an NPN transistor to drive the relay. When all said and done, I just don't want to draw any MORE current through the LED circuit than what is flowing through it now so I don't risk frying it.

Please NOTE that the relay I am going to use (HE3621A0510) has a built-in diode on the primary coil to protect the LED driver circuit from potentially damaging recoil (field collapse) current.
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Looks awsome

Gotta get it myself

 

Anyone think that you would be able to do the mod with the U30SD-xa1?
The keyboards look exactly the same...

Amazon.com: ASUS U30SD-XA1 13.3-Inch Thin and Light Laptop (Black): Electronics

 

I've ordered a U30SD, it's scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Mine comes from Germany and thus has a German keyboard layout, but I want a regular US or US international one, so I'll have to swap it out anyway. I'm gonna check first which modelnumber the current keyboard has, to see if it's compatible with the backlit version, and if the 1mm extra height being reported in this forum is not going to be a problem. If it all works out, I'll certainly order the backlit version and will try to figure out how to connect it. More news on this will follow soon.

 

U30SD came yesterday, and it has the UL30 keyboard, so I see no reason the backlit mod shouldn't work on it. I've ordered the backlit keyboard, but alas will have to wait a few weeks for it to arrive.

Edit June 08: The keyboard has shipped from somewhere near Hong Kong.

 

Just thinking out loud here, whilst waiting for the keyboard to arrive. I read a few pages back someone used a 3.3V connection to get the keyboard dimly lit, enough to be visible in the dark but not so powerful (5V) to be too bright. I'm thinking that's a cool plan, and was trying to figure out which is the best 3.3V point to connect to.

Then it occurred to me that the SATA connection has three 3.3V pins next to each other, each good for 1.5A. I've also read here the board uses a steady 0.17A, so getting it from the SATA connector could actually work, and possibly be done without soldering even! (not that I really mind soldering, but creating a removable mod for reasons of warranty might be useful).

I'm guessing a drain that small (3.8%) won't really affect the drive connected, as most of it's parts use the 5V or 12V anyway (a lot of drives don't even use the 3.3V at all, although I'm unsure this still applies to the current batch of notebook HDD's).

What do you ppl think, good plan or bad?

 

You could use 3.3v with a diode to prevent backflow to supply always-on power for low-level keyboard illumination, and then try my idea of using the relay triggered by the Num LK LED light circuit with the relay supplying 5v USB power (with inline diode to prevent backflow), to provide a toggled 5v high-intensity keyboard illumination. Then you could have a dim 3.3v and a bright 5v setting (just thinking out load myself).

By the way, I did confirm that my reed relay (with 10mA trigger) does work, and without any added-in driver circuit. I simply wired the relay's primary terminals to the 2 points shown in the picture below (on the left-side power button assembly), and it works fine. I might take out the LED since it has a 10mA flow and my relay draw is 10mA (for safety), but with the relay wired in along with the Num LK LED it only dims the LED down a little bit, so I am still contemplating whether I should reduce the overall load back down to 10mA.

The relay is super tiny and looks like it can fit almost anywhere. I only have this all wired together with tiny jumper wires in a temporary situation on this test laptop, so when I move it all over to my wife's UL30a then I will soldier everything permanent and finalize it.

But it works, turning on/off the Num LK enable feature, toggles the keyboard on/off with no problem. I just tapped into a USB 5v source on my temp proof-of-concept test.

Just use these 2 points (see pic below) for a relay trigger and make sure you get the relay with the built-in protection diode so it does not send recoil collapse voltage through the circuit and risk damaging the LED driver. This is the correct relay which has the 10mA primary trigger draw and appropriate protection diode built-in: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=HE3621A0510

Using these trigger points supplies a good 4.xx volts, and the 5v relay I got lists a 'must operate' voltage of 3.75v, meaning that it can turn on with that low of a voltage with a 10mA supply.