Ducky Shine 3 dead LEDs, replaced all LEDs and they still keep dying...help?

Average_Joe · January 23

Hi guys,

I have a full-size Ducky Shine 3 originally with blue LEDs but now with white ones. Sadly it's one of those batches that did have problems with the LEDs dying. After a month of daily usage, one by one the LEDs either started to flicker and then died or would just die without flickering. To remedy this I replaced all of the LEDs with white ones that I got off of eBay. After a few days the new LEDs started going out one by one as well.

It's been a few years and I've been using the keyboard with dead LEDs but it doesn't look very nice and it's bugging me. I was too lazy to replace the LEDs again and also the keyboard case is a bit delicate and can very easily crack, so I don't want to risk breaking it by opening the keyboard time and time again.

Has anyone ever found a fix for the Shine 3 LED problems? Searching online, people have either returned the keyboard or replaced the LEDs and there's no updates after that. Replacing the LEDs has not worked for me. I thought about adding resistors to each LED, but you can't do that because the LED pins go through the Cherry MX switch and there's no space for resistors. I can see some resistors on the PCB itself, thought about changing them with a higher value ones, but I'm not that electronically inclined, so I have no idea what kind of resistors to replace them with.

Another thing to do would be to take apart each Cherry MX switch and add SIP sockets for the LED, so that way when a LED dies I can just pull the keycap and insert a new LED with no soldering and not taking apart the keyboard but that's not much of a solution as I would need to be changing a random LED every few days.

So, does anyone have an idea of how I should go about fixing this issue?

Average Nerd · January 23

So, I have some thoughts:

Try replacing the LEDs with ones rated for more voltage (eg. 3,5V or even higher instead of the standard 3,2V). This could save you from upgrading the SMD resistors, which is very difficult without experience.

Use LEDs from a reputable vendor and manufacturer. Ebay components are known for being out of spec.