Any reason we don’t have an RGB keyboard option available for the Framework 13 laptops?
Is there really no demand for it? Hardware limitation?
No, not really.
RGB leds fit in other keyboards. They make some crazy tiny addressable RGB leds.
Trouble is, I think they may not have planned out offering RGB for the FWL13. What I mean is, they like their parts to be interchangeable & backwards compatible, but the existing keyboard backlight ffc cables don’t have spare unused pins. So it doesn’t look like a RGB keyboard could work with existing touchpads, where the cable directly connects to. The cable from the touchpad to the mainboard does have 2 unused pins labeled “reserved” but they aren’t together or located near the existing backlight pin, so I would guess they weren’t meant for that. So at minimum, an RGB keyboard wouldn’t be compatible with existing touchpads. Compatibility with existing mainboards might even present challenges. Depending on where those unused pins go, or if they could maybe have the touchpad i2c pins also serve for a rgb controller chip. In the end, they could at least do RGB keyboards for future FWL13 mainboards & touchpads/input covers.
Interesting. So hardware limitation on the current boards, that’s unfortunate. Thanks for the response!