Logitech’s display made from 160 LED keyboards is a sight to behold

By Jon Martindale April 25, 2016

RGB LED keyboards have made it possible for all of us to have veritable light shows at our finger tips whenever we want. That’s just one keyboard though. What if you combined a few — do you think you could make something pretty cool looking? What if you had 160 keyboards and handed them to a production company? That’s what Logitech did at this year’s PAX East, and the results were very impressive.

To make this happen, Logitech teamed up with production company Iam8Bit and asked it to make something creative and exciting to look at for the event. Taking the 160 G810 Orion Spectrum keyboards (in total worth over $25,000), Iam8Bit laser etched them to allow more light to bleed through each key cap, before crafting a light show unlike any seen before.

Spread across all 10 rows and 16 columns of keyboards, visitors to PAX East were treated to a short animation that looks to blend elements of EarthBound with a side scrolling shooter, in a cutesy tale about love, revenge, and gaming.

That was the message Logitech wanted to convey with this display, a passion and a love for gaming. That and it wants to sell keyboards and a display like this will certainly grab it some attention for them.

And attention is needed at this year’s PAX East. It’s difficult to champion an input peripheral that is decades old, even if it does have fancy lighting, when everyone is talking about virtual reality, motion controllers, hand tracking, eye tracking, and all sorts of other futuristic input methods.

This could also be seen as Logitech’s way to keep RGB lighting at the forefront of customers’ minds. Many enthusiasts see it as an unneeded aesthetic feature, and since it does affect the price of a keyboard by very much, it can put people off.

How do you feel about RGB lighting on a keyboard?

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Computing Coordinator

Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…

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