Keyboard light mod and blue paint job Options

[soycap]

http://www.tekprosystems.com/zaurus/mod.htm

Sorry about the horrible picture quaility.

That /is/ really cool, but may I ask why you used incandescent bulbs instead of LED's? The power draw from LED's would be significantly less than from incandescents, not to mention the heat thrown off would be far less.

Actually, the power draw is about the same. A single high intensity 5V LED runs between 20 mah and 30 mah, these 3 bulbs combine run a total of 30 mah. The main problem with the LEDs, is that I could not find any that had good output that would fit in the Z. These bulbs are super tiny and throw less heat than high output LEDs:



This is a picture of the bulb (to the right) next to a high intensity LED (middle) and a US quater. The bulbs come preattached to positive and negitive leads and not noticible wider than black wires in the picture that are attached to it, which is why it just looks like a black wire in the picture. Trust me, there is a bulb at the end there.

I have seen tiny high output LED kits on Japanese micro RC car websites for ZipZaps and such, but can't find them in the US. I have micro red LEDs, but they don't kick enough light. If anyone knows where I can a super small, high output white or blue LEDs, I would love to hear from them.

Where did you get the power from?

Could you post a bit more info (either here or on your website) about the power connection?

This is a diagram as to how it was wired. The circuit is closed when the keyboard is slid down and the 2 contacts on the side are crossed by the metal bar in the inside of the slide rail. No wires or switches are exposed, everything except the tips of the bulbs are internal. Since I could not find a good place to locate an override switch, the lights turn on everytime the keyboard is slid down. It would be better to be able to easily turn it off, but I was just happy when it worked once everything was back together.