Keyboard computers

Keycaps are available in various languages, with US layouts being the most widely available, followed by UK layouts. Other languages can be harder to source.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard has a modified 75% layout, which means that some keys are non-standard and might not have matching keycaps in typical sets:

The low-profile keycaps included on Raspberry Pi 500+ perform like traditional mechanical keys while also keeping the keyboard compact. We recommend DSA or Cherry profiles for replacement keycaps:

The LEDs on the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard light the top half of the keycaps, which means that fully opaque keycaps might block illumination.

Raspberry Pi 500+ comes with seven presets, which are the saved lighting profiles on your Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard. To cycle forwards through these presets, press Fn + F4 on the keyboard; to cycle backwards through these presets, press Fn + Shift + F4 on the keyboard.

You can customise the RGB backlighting colour (depending on the preset) and brightness using the following keyboard shortcuts:

You can control Raspberry Pi 500+ backlighting through various effects and parameters. With the exception of the power button, which is unaffected by any effect, keyboard lighting effects are controlled through the configuration software. With this software, you can:

Use the following commands to choose, apply, and view a temporary effect on your keyboard.

You can also adjust the following parameters for an effect: speed, saturation, and hue. For example, the following command changes the speed of the "Cycle Spiral" effect to 42.

Any parameter you add must be a number between 0 and 255. For more information about these parameters, including when they are and aren’t useful to add, see Effect and preset parameters.

You can use the configuration software to check which preset you’re on, move between them, or see details about each one. Each preset has an index number between 0 and 6, representing the seven available slots.

You can reassign presets to use different effects. For information about effects, including how to obtain a list of available effects, see Lighting effects.

The following example changes the Gradient Left Right (3) preset to an effect that you specify in the quotation marks.

While reassigning a preset, you can add one or more of the following parameters: speed, hue, or saturation. You can also set a specific startup animation for that preset. For information about these options, see Effect and preset parameters and Change preset startup animation.

For example, the following command replaces the default Gradient Left Right preset with the Rainbow Beacon effect at a speed of 140. It would also replace the default startup animation for that preset so that the startup animation finishes on white LEDs and then fades into the Rainbow Beacon effect.

For each preset, you can specify a startup animation with the following command:

Replace name_of_animation with one of the following five possible startup animations:

For example, the following command would replace the startup animation for preset 3 with a pulsing rainbow animation that finishes on white LEDs and then fades into the preset:

You can add the following speed, saturation, and hue parameters to any effect or preset:

Some effects and presets are unaffected by some parameters. For example, a solid colour is a static effect and so isn’t affected by a speed change.

Hue and brightness are managed on a range of 0 to 255. You can view and set the hue and brightness of your Raspberry Pi 500+ by adding hue and brightness to the rpi-keyboard-config command.

You can customise the backlighting of individual LEDs on your Raspberry Pi 500+. This is useful for precise visual tweaks and for creating unique backlight patterns.

All the individual LED customisations that you can make are applied to an effect called direct. You then apply the direct effect either:

If the direct effect is not already applied by one of the preceding methods, it is automatically temporarily applied when running any of the individual LED customisations.

The following table lists commands to set LED colours (globally or for each LED), and save and load LED configurations.

In the following example, the specific LED referenced by the row and column co-ordinates ("2,6") is set to green with hue-saturation-value (HSV) numbers ("85,255,255"):

The following command resets your presets to the default settings and clears your saved LED customisations:

To remap your keyboard, you need to know the keycodes for the keys you want to assign on your Raspberry Pi 500 or 500+. The following command lists all possible keycodes:

You can also list only the keycodes in a specific category using --category. For example, the following command lists all the keycodes for the basic category:

Use the following command to see how keys are currently mapped on all positions on your keyboard:

Use the following command to see the keycode for a specific key at a position that you specify with the key’s row and column co-ordinates. Replace <row> and <column> with the appropriate numbers:

For example, to get the keycode for the Q key (with the row-column co-ordinates 2 2) on your keyboard:

Use the following command to set a different keycode at a position that you specify with the key’s row and column. Replace <row> and <column> with the appropriate numbers, and replace <keycode> with the keycode that you want to map to the specified key.

For example, if you wanted to remap Q (with the row-column co-ordinates 2 2) on your keyboard as R (with the keycode KC_R):

You can read the state of keys to monitor key activity inside the configuration tool to tell you which keys are pressed and released. Before you can do this, you must unlock the keyboard.

To check the lock status of your keyboard:

To unlock your keyboard so that you can then watch key presses:

The configuration tool guides you through holding down specific keys until a countdown completes. By default, the keys are Enter + Escape, which light up in red to guide you. If you’ve remapped these keys, the unlock sequence uses the physical positions of those keys, not their new labels; the command tells you which remapped keys to press for your setup.

When the keyboard is unlocked, you can monitor key activity with the following command:

This prints to the terminal whenever a key is pressed or released. For LED feedback, the keys on the keyboard also light up red as you press them. To remove the light-up functionality while watching key presses, add --no-leds to the above command:

Lock your keyboard when you’re done. The following lock command doesn’t require any confirmation; it locks the keyboard immediately.

You can set different key mappings on different layers. There are four layers that you can edit, numbered 0–3; the default layer is 0. By default, the Fn key changes the keyboard from layer 0 to layer 1. You can add --layer to any of the following commands, as appropriate:

The following command resets your keyboard layout to the default key mappings, including resetting all layers:

Vial works with your keyboard firmware to configure your keyboard in real time.

For information about how to use Vial, see the Vial documentation.