Is it because the glow would fade after a year or two? Even if it’s not cost effective compared to adding to LEDs I thought it would be a novelty thing.
I did a quick search online and it doesn’t seem very common. Mostly keyboard covers.
Obviously, the solution to the problems everyone has pointed out is to paint your keyboard with radium. This should work perfectly and have no adverse consequences.
Because they’re awful for what they are. They’re barely good as glow sticks. Very low diffused light, needs bright lights to recharge, preferably UV. Most importantly, the brightness is brief and doesn’t last.
As a kid I remember loving GITD anything, but the disappointment was always the same.
It’s not that the glow fades over years, it’s that it doesn’t keep going without having more light applied to it.
The kind of GITD that is applicable to keyboards is photoluminescence, specifically phosphorescence.
Basically, light hits the substance and makes the electrons happy. They’re so happy they throw a rave, and spin their light sticks while rolling on ecstasy.
Which isn’t accurate, but is still true in a way.
The electrons get the energy from light, which causes them to emit light over time. The amount of time they can hold that extra energy is limited. In the kind of materials that could be used for keyboards, you’d be dealing with hours at most. There are materials that can emit light for days, but the amount of light after the first few hours is too low to be useful, and isn’t really applicable for this.
You can get GITD stickers for keyboards already. They do work, just not really long enough or bright enough to be something reliable in the way a backlight is.
And, the phosphorescence does reduce over very long time frames (way more than years), so having it printed onto the keys directly isn’t worth the extra effort to manufacture, since the printing on keyboards would also be removed over time by use as well as the reduction in GITD properties. At least, I don’t think it would be worth it. That’s opinion, not something based on anything a company has said about why they don’t do it.
Fwiw, one of my keyboards has the stickers on it, and they do okay, but only when the board is in decent light intentionally. Indirect lighting isn’t enough to get a steady glow that would last for a long writing session. An hour, maybe two, yeah, but not much longer. So, if that’s the use case for them that a person has, where the board will be well lit right up to when it’ll be used, and won’t be used for the equivalent of a full shift of work, they’re great. Otherwise, backlights are vastly superior
I love that this guy shows up in the most random threads and drops no less than six paragraphs of a detailed answer, explanation and review with personal stories.
Thanks for the response. I guess I didn’t really considered the amount of light that would be required to get a decent glow on. The mid-level light someone might have while using their desktop computer followed by just the light of the monitor might not be great for it.
Where did you get your stickers?
EBay, though you can usually find them on Amazon just as cheap, and I’ve seen them at Staples and office depot before at actual stores.
This is similar to the ones I got
Not specifically endorsing any given seller or anything, just picking one as an example
Glow in the dark compounds have to be charged with light and don’t last but minutes.
If you’re talking about stuff like tritium, you’re talking about $1,000 keyboards.
Am I missing an option?
You know, sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.
I have a laptop without keyboard backlighting at home in the living room. I use one of those little USB light gizmos:
It casts a soft yellow glow on the keyboard that I find considerably less harsh than a backlit keyboard.
I mentioned an LED solution probably being cheaper because of things like that and the ThinkLight.
Like I said it’s more the novelty aspect of it that I think people might like. Kind of like transparent shells/cases for devices.
I could see mainstream large companies like Apple and Microsoft not doing it because there are better solutions out there but I figured it would at least be more present in the hobbyist side of things at the very least.
