This led strip is handy handy because I have to do less soldering. However, the downside is that I don’t have a lot of options for placement of large strips. I didn’t want to make it overly complicated, so this is what I chose. Less joints to solder since I don’t even know if it’s going to look good.
20 LEDs in total. It’s fun but not perfect. Since I decided to put the top and bottom LEDs close to the edge, you can see they are brighter than the side leds. There was no way to place the side leds closer to the edge without covering a screw on the pcb. I wanted to be able to access the domes with the leds attached. So, the sides look a bit dark. I also wish there could be two on each side instead of one, but my strip wouldn’t really allow that with room to solder wires easily.
The back is dark by the USB. Unfortunately that is because the controller sits between the leds and the bottom. So there’s nothing you can do about that dark patch.
Also, I added in the Twinkle animation. For some reason this hasn’t made it into most qmk repos, but it’s been in the code for a while now. It’s good for cases like this where the lighting is a bit uneven… and it’s magical You can do a single color twinkle as well. That’s acutally what I have it on now. White twinkle.
Okay, edit. I think i see why twinkle is overlooked. Sometimes it lags out for a bit. Ha. Back to a beautiful gradient for now. It looks really nice. iPhone doesn’t do the LEDs justice in my post.
That came out looking great! Now I’m even more excited to get mine.
I didn’t think about the controller; that’s a problem I’ll have to think on. I might just make a 1-led pig-tail and attach it directly to the controller if I find it bugs me.
Also, I’ve gotta go find the twinkle code and add it to this firmware now.
Still, I’m excited to see this mod in the wild finally
A quick bump to let you all know my PR got approved. RGB FC660C firmware is now in the main branch! and should be supported from the qmk online configurator
Rooski send some photos of his heavy 6 set up which is looking pretty good. Spent a quite a few hours redoing the footprint of the controller. The led strip will run horizontal under the 2 screw holes. We’ll see if this layout will eliminate gap in the LEDs in about 1 month.
Revision 1.1 of the controller is all set. I soldered the first 3 everything worked properly will send out to my fellow KeebTalkers next week.
Thanks to @rooski15 for pioneering this project, and answering many questions @Extra_Fox for photos and encouragement @pixelpusher for prototyping and throwing down the challenge
What do i do with the wire from that blank pin? I just installed one of these on my sho66…
I soldered the 5v, D2, and ground to the contacts on the led strip.
I taped off the wire from the blank pin with kaplan tape, LED works fine but i get random keypresses every so often and dont wanna short out the keyboard lol
ooh lol i feel stupid, i ended up soldering that blank pin to the ground haha… eh still works fine
I turned down the brightness on the solid color setting and it works fine now… It seems like the more intricate the pattern and/or the brighter the lights, the more random keypresses i get.
I’m running 44 LED and it looks great though… thank you guys!!
You can do a single color twinkle as well. That’s acutally what I have it on now. White twinkle.
