[HN Gopher] Fixing annoying blue standby lights
___________________________________________________________________
Fixing annoying blue standby lights
Author : ghr
Score : 135 points
Date : 2024-01-01 09:55 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fullcircuit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fullcircuit.com)
| Baldbvrhunter wrote:
| great hack
|
| my pet peeve is flashing indicators, especially when it means
| "all normal"
| dmd wrote:
| Looking at you, SuperMicro: Every other "normal" LED on our
| server room is green. Theirs is amber.
| tatersolid wrote:
| We have some Cisco kit at one office all from the same
| product line purchased at the same time. On the switches
| "normal" link lights are green, but on the firewalls the
| "normal" link lights are amber!
|
| Our help desk gets a call about once a month from someone
| reporting the "orange lights" which are visible through a
| small window in a door.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That's evil.
| nathancahill wrote:
| How do you feel about the (more common in previous years)
| flashing indicators for disk activity?
| masklinn wrote:
| It made sense when HDDs were universal, it provided a quick
| check for a common cause of major slowdowns (you would then
| go hunt for the source of the IO).
|
| Also on most cases you can / could just not plug that header
| in. Not an option for external drives tho.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| You didn't even need a light, you could _hear_ the disk.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Such a missing feature honestly. You could tell if the
| program had actually crashed or if it was running still.
| New macbooks should play drive noises through the
| speakers like new Mercedes do with engine sounds.
| progman32 wrote:
| I'm actually thankful for the coil whine on my GPU
| because I can tell if it's still running my compute
| tasks. I've even started being able to pick up on
| parameter misconfigurations based on the sound patterns.
| porkbeer wrote:
| They were amber, and quite dim. Just enough to notice if you
| were looking.
| jmisavage wrote:
| The giant blue LED on the LaCie Little Big Disk is the most
| annoying thing ever. It flickers on hard drive activity.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| God the worst is bluetooth headphones. Oh people would never
| use these in the dark and especially not with other people
| trying to sleep directly next to them.
| xnzakg wrote:
| I like the way Sony's wh1000xm4 deal with this issue. The LED
| is inactive when you're wearing the headphones and wouldn't
| see the LED anyway.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| They aren't needed at all. For pairing, they are kind of nice
| to have, but why not put them in the earcups instead of
| outside (at least for over-ear headphones)?
| jameshart wrote:
| Hotel room smoke detectors seem to be set up to flash at _just
| slightly inconsistent_ frequencies.
| dessant wrote:
| LightDims solved the problem of bright and blinking status LEDs
| in our home, they sell sticker sheets in various colors that dim
| or completely block the light:
| https://www.lightdims.com/store.htm
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Or just use some mostly-opaque tape, such as masking tape or
| brown cellulose tape (which is what I remember using on one
| obnoxious external hard drive many years ago) and add more
| layers to dim it.
|
| Or use a black permanent marker.
|
| A great many households will already have one or the other of
| these already.
|
| But I presume that none of these would particularly serve the
| purpose of the article, allowing infrared signals to pass
| through. Can't say I've encountered the combination of a bright
| LED and infrared receiver, myself.
| dessant wrote:
| Of course, but these are thinner and prettier because of the
| pre-cut shapes.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I just use the marker. It's been the best solution all
| around, especially since you can either dim or fully obscure
| the LEDs.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Or use a black permanent marker.
|
| I've a USB charger with a blue led so bright permanent marker
| only dims it, even after several layers it still lights up
| the room.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Seconded. I learned about these here a few years ago and have
| gone through two packages of them. The ability to dim for
| things you still want to kind of see is very nice, and as
| another person noted, the pre-cut shapes are more attractive.
| For example, I use them on the air filter level indicator where
| I still want to be able to see what it set to but don't want it
| lighting up the room much at night.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Hugged to death? Here is the Wayback version:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240101100336/https://www.fullc...
| dvh wrote:
| I hate those blue retina blasters. Few years ago I bought USB
| disk and when I connected it to PC it had nice white light.
| Finally the blue LED fad is over, the white LED lights are the
| new cool. A year passed and I had to buy new motherboard. When I
| connected that same USB disk it suddenly light in bright blue
| because I connected it to USB 3 port that the new motherboard
| had.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why is it that manufacturers go for blue or bright white LED
| indicators? I assume that they are cheap enough that it doesn't
| matter, but green would probably still be slightly cheaper.
|
| We have a USB charger that cannot be used in a bedroom, not that
| you should, but it can light up an entire room. Why not just have
| a tiny green LED? Apple is really good about not using bright
| LEDs in their product, or really any LED indicators (there might
| still be one in the magsafe). So why is it that every cheap
| random fly by night Chinese manufacturer feel the need to add a
| tiny blue torch to their products?
| masklinn wrote:
| > We have a USB charger that cannot be used in a bedroom, not
| that you should, but it can light up an entire room.
|
| Had the same issue, thankfully a piece of black duct tape was
| heavy enough to fix the issue. Really annoying to have a device
| which is essentially unusable out of the box.
|
| > Apple is really good about not using bright LEDs in their
| product, or really any LED indicators (there might still be one
| in the magsafe).
|
| They do have an indicator led on the magsafe plug, which is
| either amber or green, and is pretty bright but easy to unplug.
|
| The old MBPs also used to have a white but pretty dimmed led
| "breathing" during sleep, it was quite pretty unless you wanted
| to sleep then it was annoying. If easy enough to put a thing in
| front.
|
| I also have a ugreen mini dock with a white led, no idea why.
| It's a passive dock, if it's plugged in it's on, I don't need
| to have a reminder.
| wayvey wrote:
| I think the latest MBP M1/2 also have it still.
| Liftyee wrote:
| Speculation: Perhaps they are trying to distinguish themselves
| from the "cheaper" products by using the "new" blue LEDs? IIRC
| the technology for them was figured out much later than green
| or red, so maybe there is a bit of leftover "futuristic" feel
| to them.
|
| The last time I saw a blue room-illuminator was on an ancient
| Belkin Bluetooth dongle. IMO the practice has gone out of style
| with most name brands (including Apple).
| _moof wrote:
| It's basically this, yes. Blue LEDs were such a game-changer
| that the inventor won a Nobel prize for it. When they became
| cheap enough to use in consumer electronics, manufacturers
| went absolutely nuts and put them in everything as a sort of
| whiz-bang look-what-we-can-do thing. But since _everyone_ did
| that, they stopped feeling distinctive almost immediately.
| The only designers still using them for indicators are the
| ones who can 't tell when a fad is over. They're still very
| important technology for LED light bulbs; white LEDs are blue
| LEDs with a yellow phosphor.
|
| ETA: I'll add that it takes real time, effort, and crucially
| taste to get an LED indicator to not be a retina-searing
| nuisance. You have to be willing to devote time to getting it
| right, and for someone just trying to pump out cheap units at
| volume, that's not an easy sell.
| cogwheel wrote:
| I remember thinking the blue led on the PS2 was so cool
| when it first came out.
| _moof wrote:
| I remember, it was extremely cool! 23 years later the
| novelty has worn off a bit.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Looking at flashlight runtimes on battery, it seems like
| white LEDs (blue with a phosphor) or blue, are much more
| efficient per lumen than any other color. Perhaps that
| could be a reason as well? I'd generally prefer green and
| red.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Because a good number of customer service calls come from
| people who have a device plugged into a dead outlet. The led at
| least tells you the device is getting power. It can also
| indicate whether any internal fuses/breakers have tripped. And
| many manufacturers blink that one led for error codes and such.
| They have a purpose, and can generally be blocked by any bit of
| cheap tape.
| XorNot wrote:
| That doesn't explain why they're blue - which is a much
| brighter and more intense LED color then green or red.
|
| The craziest one is the subwoofer my parents bought for their
| home theater - this is a device you would exclusively use in
| a darkened room while watching movies...and it has a full
| size eye-searing 3mm LED to indicate "power on" (it's been
| electrical taped over for about a decade now).
| throwaheyy wrote:
| My theory is that blue lights stand out more in Amazon
| search results.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think blue just feels "modern". Red LEDs feel like they
| belong to the 80's, and green to around 2000. While white feels
| "clean".
|
| I agree 1,000% that they're ridiculous though. But the colors
| are definitely about achieving an up-to-date "look".
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Blue just feels tacky and cheap to me. Maybe "modern" and
| "cheap" are just the same thing.
| ElongatedMusket wrote:
| I think we are rounding another curve where the blue will
| start to fade away and white will be the new color
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Why is it that manufacturers go for blue or bright white LED
| indicators?
|
| I don't know but I'm sure allergic to red. I don't understand
| why _so_ many devices are using red for standby or even to
| indicate work (I 'm looking at you Raspberry Pi).
|
| To me red is "blood" and blood is "bad". Red means error.
|
| Thankfully some devices, like ethernet switches, are using
| proper colors: green for trafic, orange for "degraded" link
| (say 100 Mbps on a gigabit switch). I look at the rack and
| there are tens of LEDs and it's all blue, green, orange. That's
| correct. Zero red. That's what I expect when everything is
| working fine.
|
| Orange for standby is acceptable, I guess.
|
| I like blue. Maybe not bright blue but blue is way better than
| red IMO.
|
| If I see something red, it better be an error: alarm / motion
| detector / garage door opened / whatever.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Funny, I imagine you're pretty young?
|
| For us oldies red is just the normal LED colour since in the
| 80s this was the only colour that was available. Our alarm
| clocks, microwave displays, indicator lights and even some
| watches and calculators used red LEDs :)
| dotancohen wrote:
| For me red is pomegranates. A very happy colour.
|
| I suppose that colour preferences may be cultural.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Red doesn't bother the eyes in a dark environment.
| trelane wrote:
| It's not just bothersome; red is in the sweet spot of
| visible but doesn't interfere with your night vision.
|
| There's a reason lots of camping lights have a tree now,
| and why astronomers use it exclusively while observing.
|
| https://stellarium-labs.com/blog/nightmode/
| cf100clunk wrote:
| I would prefer that manufacturers use the traffic light colour
| scheme:
|
| * Red: stopped or off (preferably dimmed of completely off)
|
| * Yellow/Amber: startup or error state in which the device
| needs intervention
|
| * Blue/Green: running properly
| voakbasda wrote:
| For battery powered devices, red should be "charging".
| coryrc wrote:
| You don't want to make things indistinguishable for the
| color-blind.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| My guess is that next to zero actual thought goes into the
| design and production of most items these days. Companies are
| getting cheaply designed cad files and whacking them onto an
| assembly line and shitting them out into a shipping container
| bound for a nameless Amazon sellers page.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah my external HDD has a blue LED that's so ridiculously
| bright it lights up the whole room and puts a really bright
| blue spot on the other side of the room.
|
| I tried covering it with a post it (several layers) and after a
| month I noticed that the yellow colour had whitened completely
| where the LED is. Probably contains an unhealthy level of UV as
| well. Yuck.
|
| I tried opening it up to replace the LED but it's clipped
| somehow. Very hard to open without damaging it.
| pineaux wrote:
| I have good experience with drilling a small hole in the side
| of the housing and through the LED. You need to aim well. Its
| not a good technique for all annoying LEDs.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| The MagSafe cable still has an LED in it, it's green when
| you're fully charged and orange when it's charging.
|
| But I agree, Apple is good about not annoying you with LEDs.
| hollerith wrote:
| There was a time when industry did not know how to produce blue
| or white LEDs, only red, orange, yellow and green ones, so you
| see, red, orange, yellow or green LEDs are old tech, and
| consequently not suitable for our magnificent product.
| weinzierl wrote:
| This is how I remember it: For some time LEDs were red, yellow
| or green. Power LEDs were almost universally red. You can see
| this on devices from the homecomputer era (Amigas, Ataris,
| etc.). I'm not sure if red was chosen for technical reasons
| (red LEDs have the lowest voltage drop), maybe economical
| reasons or it was already a convention before LEDs became
| available.
|
| Anyway, when blue LEDs became feasible they were the epitome of
| cool and every device had to have them. So in my opinion it was
| a fashion trend that stuck.
| saberworks wrote:
| AppleTV 4k has super bright white led on the front (outwards to
| user) while the device is on. So annoying!
| flir wrote:
| Quality Street were wrapped in opaque paper this year.
|
| TP-Link's TL-WPA4220 powerline extenders (and presumably other
| models) let you turn off the status LEDs in software (there
| should be a list of hardware that lets you do this).
| hindsightbias wrote:
| When candy companies and tech companies collude we're really
| doomed.
| xattt wrote:
| This is what they mean by chocolate chips.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I wish they would remember the setting though. I have turned
| their lights off multiple times but they are currently on. Any
| blip in power supply (power cut, fuse trip, maintenance work)
| and they come back so it's like trying to keep a tide at bay.
| newsclues wrote:
| Tape is cheap, removable and blocks light.
| radar1310 wrote:
| I've used lightdims for years. Great product to lesson the bright
| lights.
| mkj wrote:
| Soldering a nicer coloured SMD LED over the top of the blue LED
| works well. Most colours have a lower voltage drop, so the blue
| doesn't glow at all.
|
| Worked well for my pocketbeagle board which was annoying me, my
| initial attempts a desoldering the blue one were unsuccessful (no
| hot air), but a nice amber one in parallel worked great.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| For desoldering without hot air, "chip quik" products are
| excellent. They make low melting point solder (like 60C). Add
| some to each pad of the led, and they will stay liquid long
| enough to remove the led with tweezers.
| groestl wrote:
| Had an USB charger once that would shine through one layer of
| black electrical tape. Crazy.
| encom wrote:
| I bought a USB charger to plug into my cars cigarette lighter
| plug. It lit up the whole cabin with blue light at night. This
| blue cancer has existed since blue LEDs were invented and
| immediately became a chinesium electronics favourite. Very
| tiresome.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| The light on the end of a Dell laptop power adaptor is like
| that. I tried multiple layers of electrical tape, colouring it
| in with a sharpie and even painting over it and nope, that
| bastard light cannot be dimmed.
|
| My main complaint is when using the laptop in dark bed to read
| ebooks and it is utterly blinding. I end up folding a bit of
| duvet over the bloody thing.
| arccy wrote:
| i drop a towel over my laptop if i need to leave it charging
| overnight
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Had this problem with an air conditioner whose one blue LED was
| bright enough to keep me awake.
|
| Two layers of yellow tape changed the colour and dimmed it enough
| to make it imperceptible.
| Gare wrote:
| Huh, all the ACs I've used so far did have a switch on the
| remote to turn off all the lights.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky.
| atticora wrote:
| I recently bought an adjustable bed base which has USB ports on
| both sides. Each port has a bright blue light that illuminates
| the whole bedroom at night. I don't use them so covered both with
| black electrical tape. Problem solved. I've had the same problem
| with several desk lamps that lit up the world with that blue
| light even when turned off. I returned a couple of those
| immediately.
|
| But I looked through the reviews for all of the above and the
| issue wasn't even mentioned. I thought I was one of the few
| weirdos that care. It's nice to read here that I'm not alone in
| this. But we have to complain enough to make the manufacturers
| care.
| hollerith wrote:
| You are definitely not the only one.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I often wonder that when I use certain products. "How can this
| obviously terrible design choice not be reflected in reviews?"
| dqv wrote:
| I think it comes up in at least some product reviews, but
| where it's glaringly obvious, it doesn't show up in the
| reviews _because_ people purposely look for products that
| aren 't like that. Buying a TV for my bedroom, one aspect of
| the search would include looking in the manual and seeing if
| has a suppressible standby light or checking for a non-
| aggressive standby light color.
|
| An unrelated example is that, at Target stores in the US,
| there are these (paper) notebooks/journals/diaries that have
| writing on the front that label them as such. The designs are
| really nice, but the labels make it ugly - as many people who
| chose not to buy the product will say "why do I need it to
| say journal on the front? I _know_ it 's a journal" and "I
| don't want to use it as a journal... I want to use it as a
| cookbook!" In this way, the reviews self-select only for
| people who don't care about the labels.
|
| They should really have antireviews where people can write
| why they didn't buy the product. It would give sellers some
| kind of signal that there's an issue with their product or
| its documentation causing people to avoid it.
| xapata wrote:
| > some kind of signal
|
| Low sales is a signal. Also, they can hire a UX researcher.
| disillusioned wrote:
| There's a brand on Amazon called LIGHT DIMS that sells
| differently sized stickers, in both ultra-dim and full-blackout
| forms, which do _exactly_ what they say on the tin, and it's
| amazing.
|
| I used the ultra-dim for the (white) temp display on my Dyson
| fan in my bedroom, and the blackout for the brighter-than-the-
| sun blue LED on my charger brick. Also used the dim one on a
| smoke detector because my 5-year-old thought it was watching
| her or something.
|
| They're absolutely great, and you can even keep a couple in
| your suitcase and fix horrible lights in hotel rooms or AirBNBs
| if you're so inclined.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Not sure if you can post AMZN links here, but it's this
| product and its cousin the blackout version:
| https://amzn.to/3RGV3My
| qwertox wrote:
| I hate electrical tape. It becomes sticky after some time, when
| it starts to smear because it got moved or stopped sticking to
| the surface.
|
| I bought a set of nail polish and use the black one to paint
| over the LEDs, it even allows you to control how much you want
| to cover it, in case you still want to have a bit of light to
| see if it's on or off.
|
| Other colors can be used to mark pins on breakout boards or
| cables. It's really useful to have around.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > I hate electrical tape.
|
| Same. I've used aluminum tape to block LEDs, works great.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Something similar: I recently bought a white noise machine for
| sleeping (a short term fix for noise at night). It has a bright
| blue LED that also lights up the whole room at night. You're
| literally for sleeping and you're going to illuminate the whole
| room with blue light?!
|
| One of the Amazon reviews did mention this. But I always see
| stupid bright LEDs that people haven't covered with tape so
| there are probably people sleeping with these on at night.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| 2 problems here: color and intensity.
|
| 1. Color. Blue is more rare in nature than other colors and it
| has a known association with daylight that is disturbing for
| sleep. Why not something more neutral like orange (not red, not
| green)?
|
| 2. Intensity. I think the manufacturers don't even think about
| this. For indoor use, full brightness makes no sese, but bad UX
| is the default choice for most, what TV manufacturer pays
| attention at their user experience with the standby led? I guess
| they never think about it.
| jjav wrote:
| > Blue is more rare in nature than other colors
|
| Since the sky and the ocean are blue, that suggests a majority
| of visual field in nature contains blue in most cases.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes but not the deep intense blue from most standby LEDs.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Same could be said of green or red though. I think it's
| time to stop repeating this just-so story.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hmm no but the intense deep blue is not good for the eyes
| and can even damage the retina at intensity.
|
| Green or red don't have this issue.
|
| It also has a noticeably different refractory index which
| is why red directly beside blue looks 'off'.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think the blue is still considered "cool" perhaps precisely
| because it's rare and it was the last LED colour to be
| available cheaply. It seems to be a rather persistent trend,
| though. In the UK a blue light on an electric kettle has been
| standard for the past 15 years at this point. Red/orange and
| green seem deeply uncool as they are associated with neons and
| old LEDs that have been available basically forever at this
| point.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I can not stand blue LEDs either. I have replaced them with white
| LEDs when they haven't been surface-mounted. I also have my
| computer equipment connected via an outlet with a power switch so
| I can turn things off completely.
|
| Yellow vinyl "headlight film" seems to have worked to make the
| blue LEDs on Unicomp Model M green.[1] I didn't think that would
| have worked, and I don't expect all film to be created equal with
| regards to which wavelengths they let through.
|
| [1]: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26454
| user3939382 wrote:
| They sell packs of various size stickers specifically for
| blocking these lights on Amazon. They're very cheap and work
| perfectly.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I got a Thermaltake Core Chassis back in 2019 and its blue LED
| was so strong that the first time I took a nap on the couch in
| that room I was awaken by it in my eye like a police flashlight.
| It was super annoying, and unexpected.
|
| I put some tape over it, fixed forever.
| barnabee wrote:
| Hotel rooms are the worst for unwanted LEDs! I now carry blackout
| tape when I travel.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yes. I've had to place objects in front of LEDs that can't be
| disabled before. But there are smoke/heat detectors that
| apparently need to blink all night and I wouldn't want to go
| taping those up. I now wear an eye mask.
|
| My favourite discovery, though, was in Spain. I started to
| notice all the hotels were wired up with a separate consumer
| unit per room. Me being me, I looked inside one and noticed
| someone had simply flipped the switch on the emergency exit
| sign to disable the green glow all night. Genius!
|
| Unfortunately not all hotels have individual consumer units nor
| do they put the exit sign on its own circuit.
| Podgajski wrote:
| And I'm wondering how much power is wasted by the literally
| billions of these status indicating LEDs...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I wonder if all the gains from phasing out incandescents have
| already been eaten alive from the probably 10000 leds that
| appear in the wake of every dying bulb? There's an LED
| billboard (the reef) in downtown LA you can plainly see from
| Mt. Wilson 40 miles away. Throwing a stadiums worth of light
| all night like that to show junk no one wants to see. And they
| keep building more of these wastes of resources.
| morsch wrote:
| Here's a related term:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
|
| I think my household lighting is still more efficient than
| the incandescents we had when I was growing up. But there
| sure is _more_ of it, in terms of fixtures as well as light
| output.
| chedabob wrote:
| Yeah the energy consumption of even the small advertising
| displays is insane.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2022/jan/09/electronic-a...
| vidarh wrote:
| I just bought sheets of small stickers.
| Groxx wrote:
| Nail polish works just about everywhere too, lasts for years
| (unlike electrical tape, which is excellent temporarily), and is
| trivial to find. It can take a couple layers, but if you just
| want to _dim_ it that can be a good thing.
|
| (edit: though I have no idea if it'll let infrared through like
| this post covers. I luckily haven't had any devices sharing IR
| windows like that)
| fantasybroker wrote:
| That's a great tip! I bought an air purifier that has a very
| bright blue light illuminating the entire room at night.
|
| Now if only I can find a way to disable its annoying on/off
| chimes.
| Groxx wrote:
| I've gotta find a way to stop the touch-sensitive controls on
| mine from responding to cats o_o.
|
| Because of course they're just on the flat top, where cats
| like to climb and stand.
| fantasybroker wrote:
| A raised plexiglass shelf/cover, perhaps?
| jstarfish wrote:
| If you have the one I do (GE portable from Lowe's), just
| put a traffic cone on it. Ugly but works.
|
| I've tried the upside-down rolling chair mats and even
| DIYed a barbed-wire mesh from chickenwire; nothing deters
| them. It's a soothing place for them to sleep atop when
| running.
|
| Condensation forms under textbooks and other flat planks,
| which will eventually short the controls as water pools on
| top.
|
| The only other thing that "worked" was having the exhaust
| from a 1U rack server pointed at it. The heat initially
| attracted them but when those fans kicked on, cat met
| ceiling.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| You can't rely on colors to indicate status because someone might
| be colorblind. That's an often overlooked problem. You have to
| make the light do something special, like blink, if you really
| need it to indicate something important.
| porkbeer wrote:
| Seems like optimizing for edge cases might not be the most
| practical.
| Scrapemist wrote:
| Just yesterday I opened a USB charging station to rip out the
| LED's. Don't want to mess around with tape. I also remove big
| obnoxious logos with toothpaste.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| Wow, someone else that is militant about removing LEDs AND
| logos.
| neilv wrote:
| I haven't had the IR remote complication like the article, but
| for too-bright-LED purposes, I use different colors of labelmaker
| tape (Brother TZe type) for different cases:
|
| * need blocking entirely (like on my LaserJet, and a UPS) --
| black tape
|
| * too bright, but still need to see, and to differentiate colors
| (like on one of my living room servers) -- white tape, cut to
| size with hole punch
|
| * too bright for when i use it in dim lighting, and trying to
| avoid blue light then (like the ThinkLight on my ThinkPad T520)
| -- orange or red tape
|
| Some of this tape, I would move to behind the bezels, if I had
| the device open for service.
|
| Black tape also good for covering up cameras on laptops. If I
| sometimes use that camera, I make it a strip with a folded-over
| pull tab, and when I temporarily remove it, I stick it poking up
| from the top of the bezel as a reminder that the tape is off.
|
| For "hole punch" Pixel cameras in the screen, a hole-punched bit
| of labelmaker tape works, but IME falls off every few/several
| months. Secondary purpose: when I have multiple phones, different
| colors of labelmaker tape color-codes their identities on the
| screen, to help avoid accidents. (Color-coded cases would be
| better, but the case series I prefer only comes in black.)
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| FWIW I bought a set of like 200 small dot stickers of diff
| colors, barely opaque. They're perfect. You can stick em on and
| use the color system you described. Like what teachers use for
| small crafts and such.
| neilv wrote:
| That works. I use labelmaker tape because I love labelmakers,
| and already have various colors of tape anyway. (White for
| most, black for more discrete labeling on black electronics,
| colors for color-coding things like employer-owned WFH
| equipment, and for rare warning labels for certain IT
| purposes.)
| bluescrn wrote:
| Black electrical tape was my solution for a Dell PSU for an
| Alienware laptop, with a particularly obnoxious bright blue LED
| on the power plug, it would practically illuminate a room while
| the machine was powered off and just charging.
| twic wrote:
| I remember years ago i was over at a friend's place and ended up
| crashing on the sofa in his living room overnight. Right in front
| of his panoply of media and entertainment devices. When the room
| lights were off it was like being in a planetarium.
| gumby wrote:
| > A free fix and you get to eat the chocolate. What could be
| better?
|
| We frame it the other way around in our lab: "The IR shield was
| purchased from Amazon [footnote: item XYZ, which was delivered
| with a free spectrometer]"
| lazyeye wrote:
| You can buy led light blocking stickers on amazon
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=led+light+blocking+stickers
| pnathan wrote:
| I will just dab some orange or red acrylic paint on and call it
| good. No IR needs though.
|
| A little hax but it works Adequately.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I use 1-3 layers of Kapton tape to dim blue LEDs. Interestingly
| it turns the painfully monochromatic blue light into a more
| pleasant teal color with two or more layers, probably by blocking
| out the blue peak more than the longer wavelengths.
| ewams wrote:
| Bought a Hisense tv for two reasons: status light turns OFF when
| the TV is on, and there is a physical disable switch for the
| microphone. Verified both in reviews and in person before buying.
|
| Electrical tape for everything else.
| porkbeer wrote:
| I would rather my television not include a microphone at all.
| But should they want to listen, they can always just use the
| speakers as a mic.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Kapton tape.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I really appreciate that on my ThinkPad, I can _turn off_ most of
| the LEDs: the power LED, and the LED on the back that dots the
| 'i' in ThinkPad. However, annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be
| any way to turn off the bright charging LED that's present when
| the device is charging.
| anonu wrote:
| I've fixed this problem on 2 devices by snipping the LED off the
| circuit board. Of course it might brick the device but in some
| cases its worth the risk.
| zh3 wrote:
| PSA: black acrylic is opaque to visible light, but transparent to
| IR - so a bit of that will nix the light but not the IR.
|
| It's actually pretty interesting to look at the world with an IR
| camera (e.g. Pi NoIR) - red wine looks like clear water, black
| actrylic looks plate glass, black t-shirts appear pale.
| powersnail wrote:
| Edit: didn't read the article carefully enough.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > the same window for the blue light is also the window for the
| remote control sensor so the black tape solution also disables
| the remote control
| kelahcim wrote:
| It looks like there is this secret society working hard on making
| people suffer in a hotel rooms after long trips. Blue TV
| indicators, white and blue air condition panels, impossible to
| cover LEDs that are attached to fire detectors.
|
| All of that to make sure the room stays as bright as possible the
| whole night. I am always impressed with the efficiency of these
| little, bright, things. In terms of a brightness per cubic meter
| efficiency.
| emmelaich wrote:
| A new phenomenon is for people to mark their driveway entrances
| with little blue LEDs. (At least here in Sydney). It is very
| annoying.
|
| If they spread in popularity there definitely will be a backlash.
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