Keyboard Backlight

[highjohn]

The screen turns itself off after 3-5 minutes (or whatever you have set it to).

But the backlight stays on,  if I leave the Astro with the keyboard extended.  Even overnight.  Is there any way of changing this behaviour?

[steeph]

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a way to make it turn off and on automatically. The Cosmo's backlight behaved the same and my questions about this have never been answered by Planet.

[gidds]

Yeah, I noticed that too… 

And although there are nice keyboard shortcuts for changing the screen brightness (Fn+B, Fn+N on my UK Astro) and volume (Fn+C, Fn+V), I can't find any shortcut for changing the keyboard brightness. (Fn+Z and Fn+X would be the obvious choice, though anything would do. Does anyone know whether there's any way to set something like that up?)

Fn+Del, tap on Astro Settings, and tap on slider isn't the end of the world, but it's sufficiently disruptive that I'm not likely to bother very often.

Does anyone know how much power the keyboard backlight might consume (compared to, say, the screen)?

[cam1965]

Yeah, I noticed that too… 

And although there are nice keyboard shortcuts for changing the screen brightness (Fn+B, Fn+N on my UK Astro) and volume (Fn+C, Fn+V), I can't find any shortcut for changing the keyboard brightness. (Fn+Z and Fn+X would be the obvious choice, though anything would do. Does anyone know whether there's any way to set something like that up?)

Fn+Del, tap on Astro Settings, and tap on slider isn't the end of the world, but it's sufficiently disruptive that I'm not likely to bother very often.

Does anyone know how much power the keyboard backlight might consume (compared to, say, the screen)?

FN + SHIFT + N ( increase ) and FN + SHIFT + B ( decrease ).

[gidds]

FN + SHIFT + N ( increase ) and FN + SHIFT + B ( decrease ).

Aha!! That's well worth knowing, thanks!

(Interestingly, after sleeping the screen, it seems to accept 4 further keypresses, but no more. That's sufficient to turn the keyboard backlight off only if it's not at the two brightest levels…)

[Daniel W]

The Cosmo's backlight behaved the same.

While this is an Astro thread, for completeness, my Cosmo used to turn its keyboard backlight once the screen went to sleep. The delay varied, seemingly at random, from a few seconds to a few minutes, but in 99% of the cases it would eventually turn off, without me having to use the keyboard shortcut.

Not so with my Astro though. It seems to just leave the backlight just on forever. I'm trying to work around it by closing the keyboard when not in use. As silly as that might be on a device, whose claim to fame is its physical keyboard, I'm even keeping it closed on my night stand and using the on-screen keyboard for my few nightly needs, mostly manual sleep tracking.