OK, a number of people have reported the "fading trackball" issue. On observation, today mine is almost back to white.

This appears to confirm that the light that we are coloring generates heat. AFAIK that is all it could be. [See my pic of alleged "fried" ink.]

I am most interested on how the scotch tape colored blue trick works. Will the tape fry and fall off as any tape would when coming in contact with heat?

In the meantime, I am looking at alternatives since we can't be pulling apart the trackball every week to color it.

I have some other inks that I am going to try, they may be heat resistant [e.g., various brands of fountain pen ink].

I will clean off the Sharpie ink residue, apply other inks and report my findings.

Most interesting indeed [and kind of fun, another pretend problem to tackle. I say "pretend" because we have no business tearing apart the Pearl to color lights, etc. ]

Sidenote: No one has commented, but see my observations and query that these "LED" lights may not be LEDs at all since true LEDs should not be generating heat sufficient to fry Sharpie ink.

Fountain pen ink does not work, it is water based and not thick enough to change the color of the light.

I wonder if pen ink might hold up better? Let me think about it. I may rip apart one of my pens, see how the ink looks against a piece of glass [may be too thick or too thin].

If it looks like it might work I will give that a try.

Since I was "in there" I applied another Sharpie coating, this time from a different pen, albeit I don't think the other Sharpie was defective.

Sidenote: The old ink cleaned right up with some denatured alcohol dabbed on to a tissue that I wrapped around a small screwdriver.

Acrylic with a lot of gloss medium might work. I also tried a paint pen once. I worked, but it was kinda dark...Highlighter works and didn't come off for the week I had it on there, but it was very light.

The best thing to do for sure results would be to replace the led altogether, but I'm pretty sure that that's something that many people, including myself, don't want to try.

Colored cellophane should also work. It would probably be best to adhere it with removable gluestick glue (works like a post-it note.)

One thing that I might also think would work would be stained glass paint you can get at the craft store. its made for glass and plastic and you can get some that you can use in the dishwasher.. the only thing with that is that its permanent and will never come off.

I have had the tape and sharpie on my trackball since last Friday and the rest since Tuesday and its working out perfect.. No melting or anything. The only thing I am worried about is that over time the tape may loose its stickiness’ with moisture and other things getting to it. But I really think that would be a long term effect. So I am going to preach on the tape idea, Non permanent and easy and cheap to do.

All your tips are good ideas. I may try the tape.

Give us a report in another week. If it is not much trouble, next week pull off the trackball and give it a visual, to see what's happening.

That's what I meant when first talking about all this and referred to it as "film." I might pick up some at the craft store over the weekend.

I looked online and I found this stuff and I really think it wold do the job, anyone willing to try it?
Delta Glass Paints are transparent, allowing light to shine through the color (such as a PERL trackball light). Paints are dishwasher-safe, microwave-safe, and oven-safe (this would take care of the heat/frying issue)
02964-OB2ww-m.jpgyou can visit the product website here -
Delta Glass Paint - Blick Art Materials

I'll try it and put it in the dishwasher, then the microwave, and let you know how it comes out. I refuse to put it in the oven, that makes no sense to me!

Nice find. But I am too cheap to invest time and money into yet another bottle of "stuff." Not sure what I would do with it after using a pinhead size drop on the light. That's a big bottle.

I am thinking of all kinds of wild things. E.g., I have about 100 black light bulbs in various shapes and sizes. Wonder if I could break one of them and take a little piece of the glass and stick it over the LED?

That might be cool [and fun to see if it works].

how do I install the theme?

Once I color the LED's can I remove it back to clear at later time? By using the alcohol?
THANKS!!!

Denatured alcohol will remove Sharpie easily. Just put a little on the end of a q-tip and rub on the led. Hairspray also removes sharpie, but I think it would be easier to use alcohol in this case.

well done
thanks (:

very good guide sf...

i would love to replace the actual ball in my pearl. maybe with a pretty marble or paint it black or another color..... anyone want to try that?

also...

how hard would it be to paint the white ring around the ball... black... to match the rest of the phone?

hey SF what would happen if I don't clean the "bulb" again. I used sharpie blue, and my trackball is back to white, since I broke the chrome cover, I'm afraid to disassemble again, so any problems if I don't clean it?

The images on how to disassemble my pearl arent showing up.

Are they located somewhere else?

Does anyone have a copy of them?

Looks like SanFrancisco removed (or moved) the pics from his site since the urls are giving a page not found error. I would hope that this is only temporary as those pictures were a very valuable resource. SF: If you need server space, I would be happy to offer some of mine to host the pictures.

It's not a server issue, just some issues related to my being on BBF.

I'll re-upload these pics since the thread got worldwide attention and many sites have linked to it.

Thankyou ALOT SanFrancisco, my scroll wheel down dosent work, and i cant get it to work.

Hey so its been almost 2 weeks and with my colored tape and there hasn't been any fading or any issues .. just to let everyone know.

woo hoo did it...that was easy. not that bright blue but still looks good!

I installed a new program that is coming out, it changes the trackball color to anything you want [six colors]. Works great. See my thread on it.

No more having to take the trackball apart.

I guess this thread is still handy to show how to disassemble the trackball. So I'll leave the pics on my server.

This has been a very helpful thread for many, me included. Thanks for the great pics.

~John

For those of you with tooooo much time on your hands get your colour felt tip pens out. Let me first apologise for the lack of pictures but a better solution is to do the following:

1. Go into your 'Call Log'
2. Press menu button and go into 'Options'
3. Go into 'General Options'
4. Go into 'Ringtone Lighting'
5. Change from 'Off' to 'Trackball'
6. Press return and save settings.
7. Phone yourself and whoop for joy!

Enjoy!

Hope this helps!

This is not what this thread was about. Coloring it gave the ball a different color all the time, not just when the phone was ringing. Also, SF has posted another thread pointing to a piece of software that will light the trackball whatver color you want.

Yeah I saw that there's a download for this too. It's for 5 bucks at Handango called Colour Your Trackball. Search for it on Google...

how do i get my screen to look like that???? just got this 8100 and know very little

Huh? Did you look at the posts in here? I referred to my other thread that provides a link to the program and I provided pics.

No need to "search for it on Google."

Those are "themes."

Look at the thread that is dedicated to themes and wallpapers. It has downloads and instructions on how to install them.

The one in my pics is the "quattro" theme, I think.

so I downloaded URL="http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=1&osId=946&jid=A6 58374BDFFC4CC1A9398376XEED17E3&N=4294917542&Ntt=co lour&R=204926"]Colour Your Trackball[/url] today and its cool.. a lot better then the marker color changing idea.. HOWEVER! I purchased that and berry alerts and the key handago gave me doesn't work for either program so I am kinda mad about that and now have to wait for them to correct the issue!

Well, I bought the color changing program and must say I am very happy with it. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that the white led washed out the color. (I say white because at that point the sharpie had completely faded.) So, I came back here and did the tape mod this time, since I didn't want it to fade. Now my pearl is nice and blue all the time. It also seems to help all the rest of the colors too.

My trackball would not scroll left all of the suddent. I though since I was shoveling dirt that i had gotten a rock or sand in the roller assembly. I used this tutorial and a little bit of my own tinkering and was able to completely take the trackball apart and lo and behold the tiny rolling pins were covered in lint! I removed the lint, and with an incredible amount of delicacy put back the trackball assembly (this took about 20 minutes and was very hard due to the tiny parts).

My phone works better than ever now. Thanks for the help.

Yes, if you look at my other thread, you can see in the pics that the various color combinations include the white LED.

You can also see where some of the "fading" that people are talking about comes from the lower right of the trackball, where the white LED is located.

I too am pondering going back in there and coloring the white LED back to blue. You are right, too, about coloring the white LED makes the other colors look better too. I noticed that when I first installed the program, but had not removed the Sharpie coloring yet.

Then what is the point of LEDs???

Nice detailed write-up but seriously, why take a sledgehammer to do mold elegant technology. Would you use a monkey wrench to "fix" your Rolex and change the battery?

So put away your Sharpie markers and use the right tool that our very kind brother-in-arms MetsFan wrote up for us and is Donateware.

Here is the thread: Another app to change trackball color

The software: ColorPearl

Cheers to all the creativity!

M@

Welcome to the forums,
This thread was created prior to that app and thread being created.

That and the white LED washes out all the other colors. But like John said it was written way before the trackball changing apps.

Bump on this thread which has disassembly and cleaning pics.

I have changed the title of the thread to take out the color change reference
since there are now programs that change the trackball color.

But the thread still remains a good source for disassembly and assembly
of the trackball, so to clean it or remove obstructions.