Logitech diNovo Edge

Since May 2009 I’m a proud owner of a Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard. It’s really a great keyboard if you are anything like me and can’t be bothered with even more cables. What I also love about it is the fact that it doesn’t have a numpad. Never in my life have I used it, and I just don’t think I ever will. But all good things come to an end, or so it seems. A few months ago it started to behave strangely.

Initially the charging light would flash like crazy when charging it instead of just blinking normally. Some time after that it started disconnecting / turning off randomly and linux wouldn’t recognize it (or rather it wouldn’t pair with the dongle). Very annoying.

So I decided to have a go at it and see if it was anything fixable. At a first glance there are no screws anywhere. So how do you open this cute keyboard up?

Yes… you essentially need to peel the orange surface off, which is not an easy task, since the glue is quite strong. It also makes you wonder how it’ll fit back together… Once the orange surfae is removed, you finally see the screws!

Not a good sign, all those glue remnants… But now it is finally open:

On this photo the problem is already solved. It seems like the cable that goes from the battery (the white block on the bottom right part) to the board on the left, the black one, is way too stretched. It was hooked into another hook further down, stretching it out completely. This is quite the disappointment; such a nice design but nobody thought about adding a centimetre more of that cable… My guess is that, since the keyboard is so thin, that it flexes quite easily during normal use and the cable eventually ruptured. If you are lucky you can just pull the cable out of the hooks that hold it in place; otherwise you have to completely replace that cable.

Putting the keyboard back together was probably the hardest part… especially aligning the orange surface correctly. But, as it turns out, the glue is strong enough to be reused without any major problems.

Overall I’m a bit disappointed that such a simple design flaw made it into an otherwise outstanding design, but at least it’s fixable.