DIY USB LED Keyboard Light

Sunday, August 20, 2006

This is a Do it yourself tutorial on how to make a simple yet effective USB keyboard light. I’m sure there are plenty of designs out there but this was how I did mine.

1. Find an old broken mouse or any type of USB attachment that has a wire. In my case I took the wire from an old broken USB mouse.

2. Cut the cord right near the mouse to ensure the longest length of wire possible.

3. Strip back the cord to expose the wires inside. We will only be using the red and the black wires for this project. The rest are data send and receive wires for the mouse.

4. Buy or find the LED you would like to use for this project (I recommend a wide angle above 20-degrees for the LED. Also something about 5000mcd or brighter would be good. I bought mine off EBAY for a real cheap price. I bought: 15x 10mm Orange 5000 mcd LED Bulb Light Free Resistors from the seller amigoofchina. He was a great seller to deal with and the prices were real cheap.

5. When you get the LED’s there are a few things to look at. First look at the what the forward voltage is, also you will need forward current, and a good estimate of how many LED’s you want to use (forward current and voltage should be given). For my design I only used one LED so the calculation was easy. Here is a link to a nice LED wizard to help you design the circuit. Click for LED WIZARD

6. The Source voltage of the USB is about 4.75-5.3 Volts so a safe guess would be around 5 Volts. Plug those values into the LED Wizard to find what a good resistor value will be for your circuit.

7. This step you can start building the circuit. I soldered from the

+(Positive) Red wire to the anode of the LED. The anode is the

longer LED lead. Next I soldered the resistor that was picked

above to the - (Negative) cathode side of the LED. Then from the

other side of the resistor to the black ground wire from the USB.

8. Tape up the LED leads so that they can’t touch, also tape up

the resistor so the leads on that won’t touch.

9. Bundle the whole group together with the LED pointing out the

top of the tape bundle.

10. For my design I used an old coat hanger and bent it to the

shape I wanted. I taped the USB cord to the wire which made it nice and flexible. This is a great easy home made USB light that is real cheap.

11. Light up the keyboard or anything else.