Luminous Keyboard Light Guide Cover for Uniform Illumination
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional luminous keyboards suffer from non-uniform lighting due to the restricted location of light-emitting elements, which results in uneven brightness across the keycap's light-transmissible regions, affecting usability in dim environments.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating a light guide cover between the keycap and the membrane wiring board to redirect light beams from the light-emitting elements, ensuring uniform illumination across the keycap's light-transmissible regions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Illumination intensity
If the light-emitting element is positioned directly under the keycap without a light guide cover, then the structure is simple and the light source can be easily positioned, but the light distribution is non-uniform causing uneven brightness across the light-transmissible regions
Solution Approach 1:
A light guide cover is introduced as an intermediary component between the light-emitting element and the keycap. This light guide cover receives light from the light-emitting element and guides it to uniformly illuminate the light-transmissible regions of the keycap, resolving the non-uniform brightness issue without requiring complex positioning mechanisms
Solution Approach 2:
The light guide cover changes the spatial distribution parameters of light by utilizing optical properties such as refraction and total internal reflection. By designing specific geometric features on the light guide cover, the light path is modified to achieve uniform illumination across different regions of the keycap
2Illumination intensity
If multiple light-emitting elements are used to improve uniformity, then the illumination uniformity improves, but the device complexity and manufacturing cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The illumination uniformity function is extracted from the light-emitting element itself and transferred to a dedicated light guide cover component. This allows the use of a single light-emitting element while achieving uniform illumination through the optical design of the light guide cover, simplifying manufacturing compared to using multiple light-emitting elements
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The light guide cover ensures that light beams are uniformly projected onto the keycap, achieving consistent brightness across all light-transmissible regions, enhancing the keyboard's usability in low-light conditions.
Implementation Method 1
Each of the plural light guide covers receives plural light beams from the corresponding light-emitting element. The plural light beams are guided to the corresponding keycap by the light guide cover.
Data Source
AI summary
A luminous keyboard includes a membrane wiring board, plural key structures, and plural light-emitting elements and plural light guide covers corresponding to the plural key structures. Each key structure includes a keycap and an elastic element. Each light guide cover is disposed under the corresponding keycap and surrounds the corresponding elastic element. Each light guide cover receives plural light beams from the corresponding light-emitting element. The plural light beams are guided to the corresponding keycap by the light guide cover and outputted from plural light-transmissible regions of the corresponding keycap. Consequently, the plural light-transmissible regions have uniform luminous efficacy.