I recently got a Framework 16 with the Blank ANSI keyboard; I’m happy with the aesthetic overall, but it bothers me that there is no Caps Lock indicator. Is there a way, maybe through the QMK firmware, to control the LED backlights on a key-by-key basis to use that key’s backlight as an indicator of its status? Is there even hardware support for that? I am interested to know if that is a possibility on this machine.
Similarly, Num Lock on the standard Numpad module has no keyboard indicator of its status. Could that also be controlled through the firmware? Looking forward to seeing the possibilities for this. Thanks all.
I’m afraid not.
White backlight keyboards seem to have the all their backlighting connected together.
~edit~
I didn’t want to leave it as an uncertain answer. For you & others with the same question.
It is indeed a single pin controlling the backlight, as a whole, for the current white backlight keyboards. It’s a PWM pin, so dimming is available, but that’s it. No per-key control is possible.
Here’s ANSI (american) layout. Will be the same for ISO (rest of the world) layouts.
Numpad,
And here is where the function of GP25 / GPIO pin 25 is defined,
Gen 2 of keyboard has a caps lock indicator on button itself. So if yours is Gen 1 maybe it doesn’t have that? Also mine is not ANSI, I think mine is called ISO or something.
My keyboard is actually the blank one, so there are no letters or indicators on the keycaps.
Thanks for your answers; that’s really helpful to keep me from going down a wild goose chase.
Oh, I missed that you’re just looking for the caplocks indicator.
Did you check toggling capslock in a dark room & with the white backlight turned off? I bet the caplocks indicator is there, it’s just blocked by your blank / black keycaps. Odd that they didn’t open the little dot for the indicator, despite being a “blank” keyboard.
The keyboards seem to share the same base hardware regardless of language. The only hardware differences seem to be the layout of ANSI, ISO, japanese, and whether it’s white or RGB. That is to say, all white backlight ANSI keyboards should be the same base keyboard, just with different keycaps. Same for ISO layouts.
