| | Illuminated iBook (Dual USB). | |
| | Five light lines are made of plastic optical fibers (POF). POF will pass through the light, though when its surface is scratched, the light leaks from there. | |
| | Compared to the brightness of LCD panel, which is set as lowest level, POF lines are even brighter.Since I scratched POFs behind each keytops, you can see the letter of the keytops glow when you type in such a dark location. |
| | | G, H, and B keys are especially bright because the light source (LED) is placed behind the keyboard. These keys are worth illuminating because they are not hidden by typist's hands when at home position. If we see the keyboard from topside (like this picture), the light does not pass through keytops so keys seems not bright. |
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| | Behind the keyboard. You see the white light LED, electrical wirings with a resister, and five optical fibers. |
| | | This LED (Light-Emitting Diode) has luminous Intensity of 10,000 mili candela at 3.6V, 25mA. A special one. The anode of LED is conneted to +5V via 56 ohm current-limiting resister, while cathode directly to the ground (0V). |
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| | The power source of LED is drawn from LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) power line whose connector is located under the memory module cover. So, the illumination syncronizes with LCD backlight. |
| | | The calculated power consumption of this circuit is 125mW while IBM 2.5 inch internal harddisk requires 5,000 mW when spinned up. Reducing power usage is easy if brightness is diminished instead.You can even modify so that the illumination changes its brightness along with LCD. See description. |
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| | A mere LED cannot make entire keyboard glow if set behind the keyboard, though there is no room for any small LED to be mounted on the keyboard surface. |
| | | That's why, I challenged using plastic optical fiber to lead light from the back of the keyboard to its surface. |
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