Backlight on keyboard - JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General

Is the keyboard on the universal supposed to have a backlight? my mda pro doesnt and i cant seem to find any settings for it either? bit of a design flaw if it doesnt

It has an auto sensor which means that it won't lit unless you operate it in the dark.
Try covering the hole above the green tel key on the keyboard and then press any key on keyboard

You can set backlight to come on no matter how light it is. only comes on once key is touched but the light sensor doesnt affect it. no real advantage apart from looking good
trouble is cant remember where i saw how to do it, may have been on techguru's old or new site

It is found in the WiKi. Here are the instructions:
How long would you like the Universal keyboard to shine? 10 seconds is too short?, change the value of this key and it will shine so long as you wish! (or until the battery dies!)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Backlight\QKeyLedTimeout
Here is the link to the WiKI too: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Universal_Registry
You can also disable the auto sensor by going to Settings>Backlight.

Related

Keyboard backlight time

I know some people wanted to increase the keyboard backlight time. In case this hasnt been posted already, mad monkey has a cab for it:
http://www.dweiniger.com/tips/k-jam.shtml
No i have not seen this posted. tried on my qtek did not work - does it work on your device. i have seen a hack for the universal not wizard
cheers
nope this don't work on the T-Mobile MDA (US model)
Is it supposed to be a DWORD value? Anyone has gotten this to work?
ch4kk said:
Is it supposed to be a DWORD value? Anyone has gotten this to work?
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Click to collapse
No joy here
didnt work either on 2.8
nope - doesn't work
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=38314
You would think someone at HTC would know how to do it. Do any of those guys/girls post on this forum?
not that I've ever seen - not on any of the official retailer sites either. good luck
p.s. the question might not be 'how to do it' but 'can it be done'
yeah, I'm beginning to believe that the whole thing is completely implemented with hardware: a keypress starts a LED "On" timer. This is also why the kbd doesn't illuminate when it gets extended. Even though WM senses this and flips to landscape, it has no control over the backlight: It takes a keypress to start the timer circuit that illuminates the backlight you see.
bummer.
Sleuth255 said:
This is also why the kbd doesn't illuminate when it gets extended. Even though WM senses this and flips to landscape, it has no control over the backlight: It takes a keypress to start the timer circuit that illuminates the backlight you see.
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Working under the assumption that it is indeed in-hardware, there would've been nothing to prevent the engineers from making the magnetic switch enable the backlight, too
Working under the assumption that it's purely software, there should be nothing to prevent WM5 from doing this... other than that nobody has coded it to do so
Working under the assumption that it's hardcoded in the driver, somebody would have to hack the driver to extend the backlight; adding functionality to turn the backlight on would be a bit more difficult.
ZeBoxx said:
Working under the assumption that it is indeed in-hardware, there would've been nothing to prevent the engineers from making the magnetic switch enable the backlight, too
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Click to collapse
I'll give you "glass half full" on that one :wink:.
However.... the magnetic switch would be more difficult to implement than a simple key press which also resets a timer circuit. You'd have to tie that additional input into a circuit that could be hard-wired with the keyboard itself.
there's my "glass half empty" viewpoint.... I've just got a bad feeling on this one..... sorry.
I guess I'm going to have to take a closer look at some of the disassembled wizard pictures to make up my mind on this.
I sure hope a way is found to fix this as well as control those other blinking leds.....
well the point was, basically, there already -is- a magnetic switch. It's used to signal the OS that the keyboard has extended, and allow it to react on that; the chosen reaction being that the screen orientation is changed.
There would be nothing whatsoever stopping the engineers who actually put the thing together (not talking about somebody taking it apart and tinkering in there and whatnot) to have hooked that up to the backlight control /if/ that is in hardware %)
And if it's in software, then nothing would have technically stopped the software developers from making the keyboard slide-out trigger the backlight that way; assuming they already do as much on keypresses.
exactly. But the kbd does't light up when you extend it you see.... This behavior shoud be obvious
ok weird doesnt even put this into perspective ... i edited that value and softreset my phone. backlight timeout is still 5 seconds and now my bottom ( previously skinned) bar has gone back to default colours ... tried removing the value and resetting again had no effect either ... lovely hack this is now i can try and figure out why the hell this just happened ... running newest official qtek rom only for info
I think this is one of the largest downsides to this device. When I pull the keyboard out the lights should come on AND it should be longer then 5 seconds. It would also be nice if it had a light sensor (like on the SMT5600) to know if the light SHOULD come on or not.
If someone (or HTC) would fix this it would be awesome.
oh, they'll fix it - for their next device models The Universal already works that way, and you can tweak the backlight time. I'm sure by now they've gotten all the feedback they need to decide that that is better than the fixed behavior of the Wizard (not sure who at HTC ever figured that would be a good idea to begin with).

SPV M3100 keyboard backlight, does it have one or mine dead?

Hi,
I got my Orange SPV M3100 on Friday and already i've noticed what i think is a hardware fault. Not a big fault and i totally love the phone (Skype over wifi an encrypted connection works perfectly), but i'm worried as the phone is only a day old.
The first few times i opened the slide out keyboard I thought i noticed a nice blue keybourd backlight come on. I say thought as i can't find any reference to it in the manual. However whatever i now do, i can't get it to come back on. I've installed a few applications, but i doubt they would have caused it to stop working.
I don't suppose anyone else out there could tell me under what situations the backlight should come on (or if one exists), so that i can test it, and if it doesn't come on, i can phone up and get a replacement sent out. Its not a big problem and i can still use the phone, but you don't expect hardware to die after only a day.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Neil
there's a small hole in the top right of the keyboard. This is a light sensor. So, if light's on your keyboar led will be off, and if it's dark your keyboar led will be on.
you have to press a button too before it comes on iv found.
there is a setting for it as well somewhere to turn it on
Thanks for the advice guys, but the keyboard still doesn't light up if i open an application that asks for text to be entered and then slide out the keyboard in the dark and then press a key. Looks like my light sensor has died. I've just phoned Orange and they are sending me a replacement for between 6 and 10pm today (what fantastic service!).
Same issue over here
Hello I am experiencing the same problem over here.
It worked for the person who sold it to me and now it does not anymore.
Do you know if this is an HW or SW issue ?
Any other cases around?
TX
seems I have the same problem. i'm on orange and the light was working now it doesn't.
EDIT: no i dont have a problem. I went into a dark dark room and then typed something and it worked. if i cover over the "light sensor" with my finger and press a button, it doesnt work.
Indeed
Indeed I had a wrong interpretation of the function of the sensor:
The sensor works in the following way:
If it is dark AND there's a key pressed AND the setting in "Settings" is set to enable sensor THEN keyboard backlight is turned on if no light in evironment.
If the setting in "Settings" is set to enable sensor THEN keyboard backlight is turned on AS SOONS AS you press a key.
A little dumb from my point of view: if I slide the keyboard in the dark, is it to look at it in the obscurity? The simple sliding should turn it on by night.
luke.a.jones said:
you have to press a button too before it comes on iv found.
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I've noticed that the backlight on mine (Vario 2, it's a red backlight... urgh) doesn't come on all the time if it's dark or dusk-level, which is really annoying. Sometimes hitting the tab key brings it into life, but sometimes it just doesn't come on at all.
One of those 'temperamental', 'great idea in theory' designs methinks.
I also found out that if the turning screen backlight off on inactivity is disabled, then every time I slide out the keyboard, its backlight is turned on.

the hermes keyboard.. the way I need it

Hey all,
Does anyone know of any means to turn off the keyboard backlight, force it off no matter what the situation? As well, does anyone know of any hack or program one could use to force toggle the keyboard on and off?
Aside from this, does anyone have any pictures of the keyboard open? I specifically want to see how the leds are arranged in there. I want to remove the blue leds and replace them with a few white or red ones.. or, put a resistor in, so that the blue leds are EXTREMELY DIM compared to their brightness now.
It's annoying to me that the keyboard leds are so bright, that they actually outshine my main screen (which has the brightness turned down).
Any ideas, anyone?
Hi Brad,
Most of the pics available had no shot of the keyboard PCB removed... I am also looking for it. I wanted to shim the right side of the keyboard since that part is lower than the left side.
Is your keyboard keys also going a little sunk from left to right ? you need to feel/look for it hard, since it is just a matter of half millimeter.
No.. no issues with my keyboard, other than I can't even stand to look at it. I literally just can't look at it. I have to close my eyes when I type. I think I have some extreme blue-light sensitivity or something.
My Hermes is fairly new, though... but again, the keys all seem fine. I can't *see* the keys, but they feel fine.
I just refuse to stare at extremely bright and annoying painful to look at things. I mean, didn't these guys notice that the Hermes seemed to be all blurry, when the backlight was on? And really bright??

No Backlight on Softkets on Cingular 8525

This is really srtange. I thought that when improving a device engineers are supposed to take the good and add more features rather than remove essential features. I had a Cingular 8125 which was replaced by 8535. The Softkeys on hte 8125 are Backlit so itis easy to see in the dark, while on the 8525 the Softkeys no longer have any backlighting. The only keys that are Backlit on the 8525 are the Phone On(Green) and Off(Red) keys. Called Cingular Data Devices Support and they said that the keys are supposed to be backlit. But when I called HTC they said that the keys are painted. It is nice to know that Cingular is on top of this. Even their Technical people don't know!!! WOW amazing. While on the subject of Backlighting, the keyboard on the 8125 has better lighting as the numbers were lit in Red and the letter were lit in White. On 8525 everything is Blue, really hard to figure out. Maybe someone out there has an explanation for all this.
The keyboard definitely has a backlight on all the keys. What you may be experiencing is that the device comes defaulted with the keyboard only kicking on the backlight based on a 'light sensor'. I've disabled this sensor in the 'settings...buttons...backlight...(uncheck the box) on "enable keyboard backlight auto sensor". I found that even in dark settings the backlight sensor would not kick on the keyboard backlight properly so now the keyboard automatically lights up by just touching a key on the keyboard. Hope that helps!
The Softkeys don't have any Backlight!!!
My main issue is that why does the 8525 not have any backlight on the Softkeys (on the front of the phone, around the D-pad)???
Sorry...I too do not have backlights on those keys but hadn't really missed it since I mostly access those by feel.
dwcliff703 said:
the device comes defaulted with the keyboard only kicking on the backlight based on a 'light sensor'. I've disabled this sensor in the 'settings...buttons...backlight...(uncheck the box) on "enable keyboard backlight auto sensor".
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No fair...the 8525 doesn't give this option.
It's the 8525 that does give these options. The 8125 doesn't.
dwcliff703 said:
It's the 8525 that does give these options. The 8125 doesn't.
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Sorry, looked in the wrong spot. I found it! As for the 8125, it doesn't even have the light sensor, let alone the option to enable one.
dwcliff703 said:
The keyboard definitely has a backlight on all the keys. What you may be experiencing is that the device comes defaulted with the keyboard only kicking on the backlight based on a 'light sensor'. I've disabled this sensor in the 'settings...buttons...backlight...(uncheck the box) on "enable keyboard backlight auto sensor". I found that even in dark settings the backlight sensor would not kick on the keyboard backlight properly so now the keyboard automatically lights up by just touching a key on the keyboard. Hope that helps!
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Thanks for the tip... I was read to throw it out untill I read this
Thanks
Thanks dwcliff703 for your post, even though it was a while ago! I thought my keyboard button detector thingy was messed up or something and didn't know why it worked some of the time!

Mogul Keyboard Backlight Delay

I have a new Sprint Mogul with the latest rom update. Every time that i slide to access the keyboard, there is a 1-2 second delay before the backlight illuminates. I unchecked the backlight sensor and no resolve. What happens is that the phone rotates the screen first and once that is completed, then the backlight turns on. This can be proven by pressing the screen rotate button on the htc home icon. If the phone is already in landscape mode, then the backlight has no delay. Is there a way that this can be modified to decrease the delay. Maybe have the light turn on first, then have the screen rotate to landscape?
now this would be nice...i feel like i switch to landscape and then wait to type anything. i looked around and couldnt find anything myself but hopefully someone can find something
Good question.....I'm interested too as that delay annoys the crap out of me, especially at night.
If you flip open your 6800 keyboard and take a look at the top of the keyboard between the Function LED and the right soft key you'll see a white circle. That's a light sensor. That's whats responsible for deciding if the keybpard backlight comes on or not. It takes one second to engage though. There may be some kind of registry edit but otherwise I don't know of anyway to adjust the delay.
-Adam
k3an said:
If you flip open your 6800 keyboard and take a look at the top of the keyboard between the Function LED and the right soft key you'll see a white circle. That's a light sensor. That's whats responsible for deciding if the keybpard backlight comes on or not. It takes one second to engage though. There may be some kind of registry edit but otherwise I don't know of anyway to adjust the delay.
-Adam
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I have that sensor turned off, because that makes the delay even longer sometimes.
the sensor doesn't work, it's well documented in these forums.

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