Fortunately it was easy to understand how they did it.
![why wont my razer keyboard light up why wont my razer keyboard light up](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xJSF78edqo0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Not one to accept defeat easily I decided to try and implement a custom backlight controller. Well, it became pretty “clear” that I bought a very expensive crappy product. Hope that clarifies the matter, thank you. You are only able to use the options available – OFF, DIM, NORMAL or BRIGHT. The lighting option cannot be adjusted to specific level of brightness like you are trying to achieve. I emailed razer support and, after a couple of emails, the final answer was: Unfortunately for me, I found out that my preferred light level to use at night under fluorescent lighting was between the “OFF” and “DIM” positions.
#Why wont my razer keyboard light up software
In the configuration software there is a tab with a sliding trackbar control for selecting the brightness but, after selecting the desired brightness level (wich is updated immediately in the keyboard) and releasing the mouse button, the trackbar jumped to one of the predefined settings and the same happens on the keyboard.
![why wont my razer keyboard light up why wont my razer keyboard light up](https://www.trustedreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2020/03/Cynosa-Lite-3-e1585490982654.jpg)
When selecting the backlight brightness with the combination Fn+F12 there are only OFF, DIM, NORMAL, BRIGHT and PULSATING (wich is pretty useless). It is large, it required me to login and it crashes half the time (the last one might be because of my environment, but everything else works fine so I won’t lose any time trying to make it work), unfortunately the macro keys, macro recording and, basically, everything macro-related doesn’t work without the software running. What Razer calls Synapse 2.0 is one of the most obnoxious pieces of software I’ve erver used. Quality-wise the hardware is not bad but I quickly found out the software is atrocious. It looks a lot better and feels a lot less harsh to the eyes in dark environments. I bought a big bag of 3mm white LEDs on eBay (around 5usd), improvised a keycap remover and replaced the blue LEDs with the white ones: During the day it was almost acceptable but, in darker environments, the blue backlight was really unpleasant. Backlighting is pretty unimportant on a keyboard, but it does help a bit when using it on dark environments and, let’s be honest, it looks cool…Īfter searching for a bit, the cheaper peripheral that fitted the requirements that I could find was the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate and it also has extra programmable keys, so I picked one up in a store for 120euro (yes, for some reason razer peripherals are sold with a conversion rate of 1USD to 1EUR). As I was about to spend 100 euros on a keyboard, I decided that I might as well pay 20 or 30 more and buy one with backlighting. I tried a keyboard with Cherry blue mechanical switches and I loved the feeling, a couple of weeks later I decided to buy one.
![why wont my razer keyboard light up why wont my razer keyboard light up](https://basic-tutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/razer-huntsman-tournament09-scaled.jpg)
Update: Some people requested details on the LED replacement, so I made a new video (on the bottom of this post) to clarify the process.