Quote:
Originally Posted by guijo
Thanks for this very nice tutorial which set me on the way to do it on my Kobo !
Here is what I did for my Kobo Glo then, very slightly different from your Kobo Aura.
1. First I followed a wrong way, thinking the LEDs all around were used for backlight, after having removed pretty much all the screws and 3 connectors (slightly scary but hope is all around). 
I know, this is not what had been described above by gezzer, but as I was working on a different model, I was thinking "who knows". I think I read somewhere these LEDs are actually infrared LEDs for the touchscreen.
2. Still following my wrong way, I thought inserting pieces of gel filter between the LEDs and the screen would work. Well, il obviously didn't: after plugging everything back in, the screen was still shining plain white. 
3. Back to the beginning, this is where the actual mod starts and where wisdom finally struck me: I detached the screen from the front case by simply pushing gently on it (it is just glued). And you wouldn't even need to remove any connector to get there. Pfewww!
4. Ta daa! Starts looking like something we've seen before, doesn't it? I gently removed the flexible circuit board strip holding the LEDs, trying my best not to break anything, just like gezzer advised.
5. Here comes the tricky part: on the Kobo Glo, you can't actually put one single strip of gel filter between the LEDs and the screen, like gezzer did: there are 5 notches, one for each LED, and I needed to cut and stick 5 micropieces of gel filter (roughly 0,5*4 mm each). I used regular double-sided tape and tweezers to put them into place.
The good news is: you can actually keep the Kobo and its lights on (though the touchscreen won't work at this stage), quite helpful given the watchmaking skills required at this step. It is also very helpful for live-testing the mod!
6. Here we go!
I know, my gel filter has a very strong red color, but that was the only one in the pack to have an actual dimming effect. And I don't really care about the color, as long as the blue light goes away (especially since I keep my e-reader 10 cm away from my eyes in the middle of the night, short-sighted as I am).
So here I am, having bought a pack of 5 30*30 cm gel filters to end up using roughly 10 mm˛ of it. But I am so glad that not only my Kobo Glo still works after everything I had unplugged, but also that the mod actually worked!
Hope this can help someone just like the original post helped me.  |
It's nice to hear that you tried and succeeded. In my case as far as i remember, leds werent placed in notches, but you worked that around. Yes, you need only a small piece of filter, you couldve just bought a piece from a photography studio, they maybe even wont charge anything for that. I got mine from a photographer friend.
How much red are you talking about? Can you post a photo?
Edit: i saw the photos after i logged in to reply, the filters themselves look very deep red compared to what i used. A filter like this wouldve work better:
http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/c...#207&filter=cf
In my case, the backlight color is identical to my new tolino vision 4hd's warm setting. And with the product i linked, it's actually intended to convert 6500k to 3200k, considering majority of white leds are 6500k and 3200k bulbs are nice mild warm night lights, it should work perfectly.