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.
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.
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.
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.
Please do add your own review. It's bizarre that manufacturers think unnecessary lights, and especially bright blue ones, are a good idea. Manufacturers have fallen a bit too much in love with blue leds.
I've got to admit, the desktop cases I got from Fractal Design also use bright blue leds. I didn't think about it until I had guests sleep in that room.
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.
It seems like it should be a no-brainer that if the light can cast shadows, it's too bright to install in a bedroom. I've started traveling with a roll of electrical tape.
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?
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
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.
That sounds a lot more livable than my solution of throwing pajama pants or socks over every LED before I go to bed. My dell laptop power connector and google router are the worst offenders.
Hardly an old thing. My 2017 model supports that just fine, and it's not just a button but a circular slider that goes all the way down to the dash lights being practically off.
I had a 97 Saab 900 turbo with an “airplane mode” button that turned off all the dash lights except for the speedometer. It was actually pretty damn useful.
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)
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The early Intel based Macbooks lit up the whole room with an extremely bright standby led. It's one of those cases where a dictator style CEO is needed. The dictator experienced this and issued a reasonable directive to never allow standby leds on any of the company products ever again. If it's on standby it's dark. And that rule has now stuck.
A good example in how different management styles can lead to products with fewer or more annoyances. Some CEOs would shrug off a product going out that could never operate in a typical house due to bright always on LEDs. Others would call it out, go down the chain as needed to make sure that mistake never happens again.
I know this advice is like 10 years too late, but if you leave the lid open on a MacBook in a dark room it will be able to use the light sensor that controls the screen/keyboard brightness to also dim the power indicator light.
> 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]”
I've been using black diamond headlamps. In recent years they replaced their battery indicator LEDs to some really strong blue ones. I use the red light a lot, and when I turn it off, the battery indicator LEDs will light up the entire room. I have covered mine with electrical tape, but the blue light shines through the plastic so it doesn't really work and my headlamp looks ugly.
I don't know why they would do this. The first headlamp I got from them had red, yellow and green battery indicator LEDs, now they have 3 blue ones. It's really annoying. I should probably write them an email and ask them to fix it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It may not be feasible in some cases (e.g. chargers) but unplugging devices entirely may be smarter than taping LEDs. Not every device needs to be in standby all the time. my granddad was obsessed with reducing power consumption and had built actual light switches into his living room walls that cut power for all TV devices at once. So in a way, the annoying LEDs also serve as a reminder that there’s a device consuming energy that we may not even be using 90% of the time.
What I want is a phosphorus tape that stoke shifts the blue LED light into a dimmer, longer wavelength green or red light. When we replaced our older oven that had a pleasant, dim, yellowish indicator light, we ended up with a new oven that has murderously bright blue LED that casts a ghoulish glow across the kitchen for those 3AM refrigerator raids. The new coffee maker is just as bad. Sometimes ‘progress’ moves backwards.
One of the best things Apple did that no one talk about but everyone definitely appreciates is the almost complete removal of status lights from their devices.
I had a similar problem with the power/standby LED on my living room PC, but I fixed it with a resistor to cut the brightness and some capacitors to make it fade out instead of just blinking on and off. I wrote a bit about it in the "Power/Standby LED" section on https://pcpartpicker.com/b/LYjypg
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.
A point I didn't notice in the comments is that Nestlé have replaced the previous biodegradable cellophane and foil wrappers with biodegradable paper, so this hack is no longer valid.
It would be interesting to have consumer standards (perhaps even regulatory standards) about the brightness and color of LED indicator lights on devices.
Someone beat me to the “dimmer sticker” idea several years ago [1], there’s clearly a problem here.
I’m a huge smart home enthusiast and have played with many devices and the only ones I’ve ever thought got dimness correct on indicator lights is Lutron.
My bedroom clock radio had a backlight that was super bright (and super annoying). I stopped by a local car tinting shop and asked them for a piece of 5% limo tint that they might have had leftover from a job. It took two layers to dim the display to get it tolerable.
A suggestion I saw here on HN was to use red lithographers tape. It's great,the LED's status is still visible but it doesn't blare and bounce off the ceiling.
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.
One can often open the cases of electronics to expose the PCB and then use a razor blade to cut the offending traces. This gives an excellent cosmetic result (no tape!), and most electronics don’t mind their LEDs becoming open circuits. And IR receivers are entirely unaffected as long as you cut the right traces.
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.
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.
I use felt, tesa or fitness tape. It’s almost like adhesive cloth, so it has small holes in it that leak light but block most light almost like polarized lenses. Put it on all kinds of devices and it numbs the bright LED lighting substantially.
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.
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.
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.
I've put electrical tape over those things, like other commenters. In one or two cases, I put a tiny pinhole into the electrical tape right over the LED, in order to still see the light, but at a severely reduced brightness.
I'm pretty sensitive to petty annoyances, but for some reason this doesn't bother me. Having a couple of random LEDs around the house helps with walking around very late at night. And in bed I wear an eyemask, so...
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.
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.
Ever read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson? The main character has an allergy to logos, removes them from everything they can. Thanks for the toothpaste tip.
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.
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.
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.
atticora|2 years ago
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.
qwertox|2 years ago
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.
disillusioned|2 years ago
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.
globular-toast|2 years ago
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.
bdavbdav|2 years ago
mcv|2 years ago
I've got to admit, the desktop cases I got from Fractal Design also use bright blue leds. I didn't think about it until I had guests sleep in that room.
hollerith|2 years ago
saargrin|2 years ago
kelahcim|2 years ago
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.
cantSpellSober|2 years ago
drc500free|2 years ago
mrweasel|2 years ago
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?
weinzierl|2 years ago
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.
Liftyee|2 years ago
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).
TacticalCoder|2 years ago
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|2 years ago
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.
sandworm101|2 years ago
crazygringo|2 years ago
I agree 1,000% that they're ridiculous though. But the colors are definitely about achieving an up-to-date "look".
hollerith|2 years ago
masklinn|2 years ago
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.
trilbyglens|2 years ago
saberworks|2 years ago
cf100clunk|2 years ago
* 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
orenlindsey|2 years ago
But I agree, Apple is good about not annoying you with LEDs.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
neilv|2 years ago
* 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|2 years ago
LeftHandPath|2 years ago
woutersf|2 years ago
With all the screens in midern cars, even the minimum brightness is too bright for me driving in the night.it wont let your eyes adapt to the dark.
My last Hyundai had a moon button to turn off screen but that was an exception ithink.
I have driven hours with a cloth over the screen of my skoda octavia in the night.
Please let me turn off the screen for dark night driving, thank you.
TylerE|2 years ago
demondemidi|2 years ago
userbinator|2 years ago
Groxx|2 years ago
(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|2 years ago
Now if only I can find a way to disable its annoying on/off chimes.
dessant|2 years ago
chrismorgan|2 years ago
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.
dgacmu|2 years ago
flir|2 years ago
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|2 years ago
Fluorescence|2 years ago
AdrianB1|2 years ago
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.
globular-toast|2 years ago
jjav|2 years ago
Since the sky and the ocean are blue, that suggests a majority of visual field in nature contains blue in most cases.
twic|2 years ago
AnotherGoodName|2 years ago
A good example in how different management styles can lead to products with fewer or more annoyances. Some CEOs would shrug off a product going out that could never operate in a typical house due to bright always on LEDs. Others would call it out, go down the chain as needed to make sure that mistake never happens again.
callalex|2 years ago
kwhitefoot|2 years ago
gumby|2 years ago
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]”
quechimba|2 years ago
I don't know why they would do this. The first headlamp I got from them had red, yellow and green battery indicator LEDs, now they have 3 blue ones. It's really annoying. I should probably write them an email and ask them to fix it.
dvh|2 years ago
mkj|2 years ago
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|2 years ago
zh3|2 years ago
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.
edgartaor|2 years ago
https://youtu.be/oHeehYYgl28?t=823
Findecanor|2 years ago
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
barnabee|2 years ago
globular-toast|2 years ago
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.
wlesieutre|2 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33278895
gka|2 years ago
BenFranklin100|2 years ago
Razengan|2 years ago
userbinator|2 years ago
A subtle glow is the best for an indicator light.
nfriedly|2 years ago
cratermoon|2 years ago
user3939382|2 years ago
nyanpasu64|2 years ago
magospietato|2 years ago
emmelaich|2 years ago
If they spread in popularity there definitely will be a backlash.
efitz|2 years ago
Someone beat me to the “dimmer sticker” idea several years ago [1], there’s clearly a problem here.
I’m a huge smart home enthusiast and have played with many devices and the only ones I’ve ever thought got dimness correct on indicator lights is Lutron.
[1] https://a.co/d/h9QbBRL
chiph|2 years ago
Rebelgecko|2 years ago
anonu|2 years ago
tanseydavid|2 years ago
I have multiple layers of blue packing tape over them to deal with it.
I need "sleep hygiene" and for me that involves reducing sensory inputs to as close to zero as I can get.
amluto|2 years ago
JoshTriplett|2 years ago
Podgajski|2 years ago
kjkjadksj|2 years ago
whalesalad|2 years ago
INTPenis|2 years ago
I put some tape over it, fixed forever.
orenlindsey|2 years ago
jahewson|2 years ago
porkbeer|2 years ago
bluescrn|2 years ago
kazinator|2 years ago
stevage|2 years ago
narag|2 years ago
https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-turquoise-automated-driving-li...
Get ready for the future :)
ewams|2 years ago
Electrical tape for everything else.
porkbeer|2 years ago
lazyeye|2 years ago
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=led+light+blocking+stickers
SanjayMehta|2 years ago
Two layers of yellow tape changed the colour and dimmed it enough to make it imperceptible.
Gare|2 years ago
Scrapemist|2 years ago
cantSpellSober|2 years ago
tastysandwich|2 years ago
silveira|2 years ago
jacobsenscott|2 years ago
juancn|2 years ago
newsclues|2 years ago
cantSpellSober|2 years ago
pnathan|2 years ago
A little hax but it works Adequately.
groestl|2 years ago
Fluorescence|2 years ago
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.
encom|2 years ago
radar1310|2 years ago
JohnFen|2 years ago
powersnail|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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masto|2 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|2 years ago
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vidarh|2 years ago
jnsaff2|2 years ago
benson121|2 years ago
[deleted]
Baldbvrhunter|2 years ago
my pet peeve is flashing indicators, especially when it means "all normal"
idontwantthis|2 years ago
dmd|2 years ago
jmisavage|2 years ago
jameshart|2 years ago
nathancahill|2 years ago
Deborahluis|2 years ago
[deleted]
mandyharhalos23|2 years ago
[deleted]
elf25|2 years ago
[deleted]