Comments on: MBP Keyboard Assembly: Backlight illumination with FTIR

By: shayan

shayan — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:07:53 +0000

many thanks to you Johannes for your guide ! it was very useful and i’m looking for this(changing backlit color)for so long time !

peace…
shayan

By: johannes

johannes — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:15:39 +0000

take a red pen and paint the leds red? i don’t know…

By: Max

Max — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 04:50:06 +0000

what is the best colorizer for red? where to get it? thanks

By: Niloc

Niloc — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:51:57 +0000

Hey, I wonder is the progress of replacing keyboard backlight color is same for 09′ MBP with older verison?

By: crag

crag — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:03:27 +0000

Hi John, I have a late 08 MB unibody (uk) with no backlit keyboard so I have fitted 1 myself, wasn’t hard to do. But….OSX still doesn’t give me the option to illuminate the keyboard. F5 and F6 still do nothing. In bootcamp tho running win7, it shows on the screen that the brightness is being adjusted with F5 F6 but the backlight is still out??? eather I have a duff BL or is there something missing in OSX if the MB doesn’t come with a BL as standard?

By: johannes

johannes — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:44:06 +0000

i definitely wouldn’t wash the keyboard because there are metallic parts in there that will corrode if they get wet!!!

By: pr1

pr1 — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:00:13 +0000

Hey!

just wandering, if i wash my keyboard*in water) and let it dry for couple of days, will it still work
????

i’m afraid to do that, cause i have no spare keyboard :>

By: johannes

johannes — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:15:07 +0000

hi ben
judging from what you have written i think that the problem lies within the dirty dotted plastic sheet. in my opinion the black foil does only prevent that light comes out of the keyboard/foil bundle and is being reflected by the aluminum of the keyboard pit of the macbook’s body. this would result in an uneven illumination of the keyboard.

all the magic of the even (and thus also uneven) illumination of the keyboard is caused by the dotted platic sheet. light of the LEDs in the middle of the keyboard bundle is dispersed and reflected endlessly within the transparent plastic sheet (this is what is called FTIR). only if this reflection is disturbed by a different surface (the dots) of the transparent plastic sheet the reflection is disturbed and the light is being refracted. as those dots are under the keys, the keys will be illuminated.

to conclude, i think you could open up your mb again and clean the dotted plastic sheet. it should not come from the black plastic sheet.

cheers
johannes

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:55:53 +0000

Many thanks for this strip down and explanation! I am not particularly technical however yesterday I managed to replace the broken backlit keyboard in my late-’08 Aluminium Macbook with a non-backlit one (the only keyboard I could find after months of looking!), yet retained the backlight functionality by keeping hold of the backlight sheet.

It seems to have worked great (even the keys on the non-backlit keyboard are the same as those on the backlit one so did not need to be replaced!), however the backlight suffers from significant dimming at the edges. Do you think that this is due to the seal of the black plastic sheet being broken (necessary to remove the old keyboard), or is it simply due to a slightly dirty plastic reflector sheet (the one with the white dots)? My reflector sheet wasn’t spotlessly clean when I put it back in as I wasn’t aware of its functionality, and I was wary of separating it from the black sheet separating it from the actual keyboard.

Essentially what i’m trying to get at is whether or not it’s worth going back into the laptop to have a clean – or if the broken seal on the black plastic sheet would render any cleaning useless anyway. I’m hesitant to do this as, as I’ve said, I’m not particularly technical and I’m scared I’ll damage the logic board or any connectors in the process.

Many thanks
Ben

By: johannes

johannes — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:18:53 +0000

@Tom sorry for answering that late: no, i don’t think that this keyboard is the same than the mid 2009 MBPs.

however, the backlight functionality is the same. thus, greg parker’s keyboard (as you can see in the image above) uses a red backlight foil.