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Have we let the LED indicator light go too far?
- blackrock 6y agoMy TV confuses me, where a solid red light, indicates the TV is off. But a blinking red light, indicates the TV is on. I’ve had this TV for years, and I still can’t remember how to understand the LED lights.
- Animats 6y agoClassic NEMA color coding is: - Green - status OK. - Yellow - status abnormal but does not require urgent attention. - Red - you should be doing something about this. No red light should be on for long periods. - Blue or white - on, no particular meaning. This is still seen in industrial plants, often in the form of stacked cylindrical lights on a post on top of a machine. Anyone can look at the whole shop floor and see what needs attention. LED color coding is - Red - 1970s. - Green - 1980s. - Blue - 1990s. - Color changing - 2000s.
- kylehotchkiss 6y agoLiteral LCD display with touchscreen to display status - 2020s (see https://amplifi.com/ https://amplifi.com/)
- fnord77 6y agoI paint over them with either nail polish or model paint.
- chrysoprace 6y agoI bought a fairly pricey, but sturdy pedestal fan to endure the hot Australian summer. I read a couple of reviews and they were fairly favourable, but in the end I missed the key flaw: it has a giant bright white LED indicator to show the fan speed. It does not have an option to hide the LED indicator and so I've had to cover it up with paper to avoid my room lighting up at night. I know the message has been echoed by a few people in this thread, but how hard is it to allow these indicators to be disabled or simply not install them on the device?
- jbaber 6y agoLithographer's tape switches the light to very dim, but visible red.
- EricE 6y agoLeave the freaking indicator lights alone. Advocate that manufacturers let you turn them off if you like, but I loathe devices that don't have them. Especially when they direct you for some damn app when I could just glance at an indicator light the majority of time to figure out what I need to know.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoKylie Minogue - Your Disco Needs You [0} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqtzMue6Izw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqtzMue6Izw
- devit 6y agoJust buy aluminum foil tape (or use aluminum foil + regular tape) and cover them all. Aluminum foil blocks all light and is thin and cheap. You can also cover windows in places without effective light blocking devices like roller shutters.
- paultopia 6y agoThe worst are wireless chargers on the bedside table. Too dim, and you can't tell they're charging in the daytime. Too bright, and they're obnoxious at night. And the lights are actually needed because the chargers are so finicky to position, so you can't just slap a piece of electrical tape over them, which is my usual solution to LEDs. I suppose manufacturers could have the brightness level adapt with an ambient light sensor, but then the price goes up. Ugh. My personal least favorite LED ever, however, was a temporary apartment I lived in that put a wifi router with a blinking blue LED directly over the bed. WHY?!
- vidarh 6y agoBlue LEDs are infuriating. I remember the days when blue LEDs were too expensive to use in consumer products... Wish it was still like that.
- delecti 6y agoI agree wireless chargers are super finicky, but don't most phone screens wake up when they start charging? I always used that as the indicator for when I had gotten it to the right spot.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- paultopia 6y agoTrue, but I really like my apple leather folio case...
- jpindar 6y agoMy phone's LED blinks occasionally when it's charging and the screen is off. It's just the right brightness.
- the_pwner224 6y agoUnfortunately many newer phones don't have notification LEDs :(
- lorenzfx 6y agoI put power strips with switches on most electronic stuff to make sure they are switched completely off when I don't need them. Gets rid of the annoying lights as well. I especially like those with foot switches on a separate cord. The power strip on all the power adapters can remain hidden, but you can still easily switch everything on and off.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoOh god, I hate these foot-switched power cords. I still remember my second job, when in the middle of some work I accidentally stepped on the foot switch. Hearing the distinctive "click", I froze. At that moment, I felt like a character in a war movie, who just stepped on a land mine. Instinctively, I pulled a knife from my pocket, carefully slid it under my shoe, held the button down with it, asked a co-worker to fetch me my bag, and duct-taped the switch along with the knife. The switch stayed that way ever since, until eventually we had to move to a larger office.
- crtasm 6y agoMultiple layers of electrical tape on most of my devices to bring the lights down to a reasonable level. A brand name battery charger and an off-brand HDMI splitter are the worst things I own for intensely bright blue LEDs. And why do my friends' Bluetooth speakers have both a power on light and a loud sequence of beeps when you turn them on or off? Not to mention the beep when you press a physical volume button on them.
- moltar 6y agoI just use electric tape and tape them all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- vidarh 6y agoSame here. So easy to pull off and re-tape if I ever need to actually see if a light is on. If I "just" want to dim a led instead of completely cover it, you can by packs of hundreds of small circular stickers in various colours for next to nothing. I bought 400 black ones several years ago, and most leds are dimmed enough to be a lot less annoying by one of them. Some take 2-3 - especially super-bright blue leds. But usually either one of the dots or electrical tape is what I want.
- mindslight 6y agoI use little bits of gaff tape instead of electrical tape, for less sticky residue. If I still want an indicator, I poke a hole in the tape with a pin. Stickers are probably a better idea though! Of course I've done this to myself too. "This network switch would look cooler with purple LEDs". oops. FWIW electrical tape transmits infrared. Not a concern here, but it can be if you're expecting it to trigger an optointerrupter!
- mrspeaker 6y agoSOoo much electrical tape around my house covering LEDs and displays. Products are designed in isolation - where one crazy-bright blue LED might be tolerable (in the bright testing environment). But get a house full of devices, and that's a lot of LEDs. The one that annoys me the most is my thinkpad. Apple made the slow, gentle "heartbeat" indicator when your laptop was asleep. It was a unique, delightful touch... for a while. Then everyone copied it (making it far less unique and delightful) - except they made the blinking faster, and the light red?! Then Apple realised it was annoying and useless, and got rid of it... but everyone else kept them. Thankfully there is electrical tape.
- viraptor 6y agoI hate both solutions. Many ThinkPads are okish with just a faint red led. But some also have a pulsing heartbeat blue light on the side when they're sleeping. How is that useful? On the other hand with Macs now you can't tell what it's doing sometimes. Doesn't turn on, but the haptic feedback works on the touchpad? Is it just waking up from the disk? Is it hanging? Is the battery below minimum? Who knows... The small red led on x1 carbon is my favourite.
- ajsnigrutin 6y agoThe problem with indicator lights is, that they're useless, until you actually need that info. If i turn my head just a bit, i can see a 48 port ethernet switch with 50+ blinking lights here in the office, and 99.9% of the time, they're all useless. But, if something doesn't work, one quick glance, can tell me if the switch is on (lights), if the data is sent through (random blinking), if the ethernet connection to my pc is up (one specific light), is it waiting for spanning tree to set up (light color), is there a loop (all lights on, or blinking synchronously), and also if the connection is slow during a calm time, I can see who's sending most traffic (frequency of blinking). I literally never look at them when all is ok, but when it's not, i get the status info in literally a second. Same with my home router with 8leds (especially the "internet" one), same with my PCs (on/off, hdd activity) etc. My prefered solution would be just to keep those things away from the bedroom. Currently, in my bedroom, there is only one visible led (TV), and even that one is very very dim red.
- StavrosK 6y agoA button or setting that turned the LEDs on/off would probably be prudent.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoMy HP ZR2440w screens have this. But I don't need it there, because it isnt glaringly bright. Some other stuff I have could profit from it, but lacks that setting. Dark tape does wonders :-)
- kqr 6y agoWould also be very easy to add a switch that turns the indicator lights on while pressed. At least any indicator lights I look at already require me to be at arm's length from the device to discern which light is which. Note that this is not one of those things that sound simple but would complicate the design a lot. It's literally just adding a switch to one of the line supplying power to the lights. It can be done completely modularly -- probably even hacked into place after the fact.
- 6y ago
- edelhans 6y agoOne of the reasons I bought a FRITZ!Box was that I can control all the LEDs. Lets me change the brightness or completely turn them off. I wish more devices had a feature like this.
- lorenzhs 6y agoMy wireless access point (a tp-link eap245) has a single LED, and that can be turned off in the webinterface. I wish every device had such an option.
- lucb1e 6y agoMy tp-link actually has a button next to the LEDs that turns them all on or off. If I want to know whether it's my router that's broken or if the DSL line is down, I press the button and look at the indicator for DSL. The same-brand powerline adapter has it in the webinterface, I find that less nice but it works as well.
- alexhawdon 6y agoMy last ADSL router/modem from Vodafone (UK telecoms/broadband company - unsure who the OEM was) was amazing in this respect. You could configure it to have all the lights off by default, and it had an infrared proximity sensor built into the top - wave your hand to activate the blinkenlights.
- Nextgrid 6y agoLEDs on most networking equipment are software-controlled. I can disable them on my OpenWrt devices and even the Devolo stock firmware also included a feature to disable LEDs.
- jmisavage 6y agoI have 2 LaCie Little Big Disk firewire drives. They each have a 1/2 inch diameter blue LED for hard drive activity. Needless to say I have to turn them around to face the wall otherwise I would go blind and insane.
- agumonkey 6y agonext: animated car turn signals
- encom 6y agoI don't know why these infuriate me so much, but this is the absolute worst. Maybe because it looks so obnoxious. It seems like it should not be legal.
- northwest65 6y agoLikewise. I've decided to give it a few years, perhaps by then I'll have made peace with it. At this point though, I get that same odd feeling... how can these be legal? I can't even pinpoint what it is that irritates me about them, but I'm assuming it's just them being a complete deviation from what has been the norm for so long fucking with me.
- agumonkey 6y agoI also have irrational thoughts on the matter. Few feelings: - looks toyish and immature - marketing trick to sell whatever as new and improved - actually badly designed, something is wrong in all animations I've seen, it doesn't convey a warning but attracts attention and the light output is probably less contrasting because instead of full on / full off cycles, you get length of 5%, 10%,... up to 100 then off. [0] It will probably pass but in the mean time, enjoy the trigger. [0] reminds me of this era of electronics who are more absorbing than helpful
- gensher_mage 6y agoI think it's mostly because the eye is drawn to motion/change, which hijacks your attention. When the turning light is blinking on-off, it only distracts you for a fraction of a second each time it blinks, while alerting you to the driver's intention. The animated turning lights are in motion closer to 90% of the time, so it takes a second to tell you what blinking light tells you in 10 milliseconds, and uses far too much of your attention bandwidth compared to how much information it conveys. I think they should be illegal. The light should alert you and let you focus attention elsewhere, not mesmerize you with useless fanciness.
- TonyTrapp 6y agoBought a PC case last year which has a green power LED. It's infuriating how bright it is in the dark, and despite being placed below my desk I can still see it e.g. when playing a game in the dark. I wrote a message to the manufacturer and suggested that this is pretty annoying. They were quite dismissive and replied that it's "impossible to make it darker". I'm not an electrical engineer but I'm positive even I could accomplish that task with some additional resistors. Edit: I should also add that the LED is part of the power button, so it's not so simple to just tape over it. If I want to play in the dark, I put a piece of paper / cardboard on top of the PC.
- tass 6y agoMy ASRock motherboard has a 'goodnight LED' setting - the power LED turns on for a couple of seconds when the computer first turns on, then turns off the rest of the time. Otherwise you can just disconnect it from the motherboard, it should be wired separately.
- Nextgrid 6y agoIt's a shame that these LEDs aren't exposed to the OS so you can control them in software; so the firmware turns them on by default to indicate power, but then once the operating system loads it is able to turn them off if necessary.
- frosted-flakes 6y agoOn my desktop PC, the plug to the power button + lights is actually split into its component parts, and each component is labelled. So I can connect to each pin on the motherboard header separately. This made it easy to yank the power and HDD activity lights, while keeping the power and reset buttons enabled.
- masklinn 6y agoMy fractal design case actually uses a separate cable for each of them. It's great.
- 6y ago
- throwanem 6y agoCheaper than buying a pack of single-use round stickers is using a sewing needle to make a tiny hole in a piece of electrical tape, and sticking that over the LED such that just a little light can come through the hole. It's enough to see the state of the indicator when you care, and also enough to keep it from annoying when you don't.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoI use this to reduce the volume on piezo buzzers. A needle hole punched in cellophane tape over the port. With sewing needles, the tip has a taper so you can tune the volume by gradually opening the hole.
- sunnyP 6y agoI was pleased with Vanatoo speakers that allow for dimming or shutoff of the LED lights.
- kaetemi 6y agoBoth my TV and my router have options in the menu to turn the indicator lights off.
- manaskarekar 6y agoThere is something about LEDs on metal parts that is very “sci-fi cool” to me. To pick one category, status indicators on older Dell Latitudes and Macbook Pros. These were small, pleasant, and very useful. The “breathing“ pattern is also amazing. So simple, yet nice.
- mmcconnell1618 6y agoSir, these lights are blinking out of sequence. What should we do? Shatner - "Get them to blink in sequence" https://youtu.be/kG-0V-85H_0?t=101 https://youtu.be/kG-0V-85H_0?t=101
- manaskarekar 6y agoHaha, that's classic. Reminds me, Dell Workstations have multiple numbered LEDs on the front panel that pretty much describe an error in binary.
- flareback 6y agoThe indicator light for the macbook pro camera is an example of an led used correctly. Off when the camera is off and on to show that the camera is on.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoAnd it stays on for a minimum of 3 seconds no matter how long the camera is on. So there's less worry about micro-activations either from malware or badly-made Hubs For Teamwork.
- szatkus 6y agoSeems like at least one company solved this problem. I have Asus TUF monitor (I don't remember exact model, but they should be similar) and LED indicator is almost unnoticable at night, but enough to see if the monitor is on. [0] https://www.pcomp3000.pl/images/produkty/Monitory_32/VG32VQ/1.jpg https://www.pcomp3000.pl/images/produkty/Monitory_32/VG32VQ/... (I couldn't find higher resolution image, the indicator is on the bottom right)
- hannob 6y agoThe first thing I usually do in a Hotel room is to unplug the TV. What drives me really crazy is that lately there seems to be a trend to have smoke detectors with regularly blinking LEDs above the bed in Hotel rooms. I make sure I always have some stickers with me when I go to Hotels, but I find it really hard to understand how anyone could think this is a good idea or even acceptable...
- kaybe 6y agoAnd the staff seem to re-plug them every day in many places, quite annoying.
- ponker 6y agoFirst thing I do on a business trip is ask for extra towels and put the Do Not Disturb sign on. I don't take it off until I check out. The staff re-plugging the TV makes sense since their checklist likely requires them to ensure that the equipment in the room is functioning correctly.
- devit 6y agoFor some reason hotels don't actually seem to optimize rooms for sleeping at all.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y ago> I make sure I always have some stickers with me when I go to Hotels For extra fun, put a sticker over it that says "THIS IS NOT A CAMERA". Something like this: https://twitter.com/JimStLeger/status/762008969153908736/photo/1 https://twitter.com/JimStLeger/status/762008969153908736/pho...
- egypturnash 6y agoI have put black masking tape over so many LEDs in my life. Often more than one layer. Once I can no longer see them lighting up the nearby environment when the lights are off, I am done.
- tobr 6y agoAgreed that there’s a market for home electronics that doesn’t try to sell on looking coolest in a store, but are reliable and work well in real life. No beeps, no unnecessary LEDs or LCDs, no fancy branded™ features. Just simple, basic, sturdy design that looks right in a home. You could probably sell commodity hardware with high margin if you sold it with this promise and story.
- tedd-the-tiger 6y agoFucking smartphones and cars that need a musical jingle when they turn on and off, which you can't disable.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cptskippy 6y ago> that there’s a market for home electronics that doesn’t try to sell on looking coolest in a store These probably don't sell because when you go into a store the first thing you see is the one lit up like a Christmas tree.
- reaperducer 6y agoAgreed that there’s a market for home electronics that doesn’t try to sell on looking coolest in a store, but are reliable and work well in real life. No beeps, no unnecessary LEDs or LCDs, no fancy branded™ features. Just simple, basic, sturdy design that looks right in a home. Start reading magazines about gardening, retirement, group travel, birds, and other topics that skew 40+. Plenty of ads for such things there.
- tobr 6y agoI get an inkling that this is very different from what I was trying to suggest, but maybe not. Is there some way to read more about these products without subscribing to some magazines I don’t care about?
- yen223 6y agoI've got a set of $30 wireless earbuds, the Soundpeat Trueaudio, which are surprisingly decent for its price, except for one fatal flaw. It has an indicator light that blinks when it's on. Which is fine when it's bright, but in a dark setting the blinking is so obnoxious it is pretty much unusable.
- bloodorange 6y agoIf you permit me an unsolicited suggestion, I've had success using a black permanent marker to dim overly bright LEDs to an acceptable level. For really bright ones, which are causing trouble when the area is otherwise dark, I've also had success covering them with black insulation tape. It leaves them bright enough to be clear but not so bright as to cause annoyance.
- adrianN 6y agoNail polish should work quite well.
- pickledcods 6y agoHad a keyboard once, with three brightest high intensity leds ever seen directed at your face. Got an icepick and stabbed it until it was no more. Highly satisfying.
- WhiteSage 6y agoDark red nail polisher works like a charm to (semi)permanently turn bright blue LEDs into dim red ones.
- cptskippy 6y agoI've been using black sharpies, they work well enough for most situations.
- anotherevan 6y agoThe power LED on the sub-base next to my TV bright I couldn't even watch TV as I was squinting. I put about five layers of masking tape over it to dim it enough that I could still see when it was powered, but it didn't light the whole damn room up. The clock in my bedroom uses an orange display, which I figure is better than one emitting blue light when you're trying to sleep. And speaking of blue light when you're trying to sleep: a CPAP machine with blue back lit control panel so bright that I drop a face washer over it to block it out. That one feels particularly ironic.
- arprocter 6y agoThe display on our old cable box was green, and I had no trouble reading the time from across the room; whereas the replacement has a blue clock and I really struggle to read the numbers (the look-to-the-side-of-the-thing-you-want-to-see trick kind of works). I always assumed bedside clocks were red due to it being least detrimental to your night vision
- jeffbee 6y agoYour eyes can't focus the blue light. That's one of the reasons blue LED displays are so irritating. A low-intensity LED segment or dot panel is the best for a clock, but because they require a driver module and calibration to not look terrible, they cost a lot (relatively speaking). A calibrated amber 5x7 matrix is, to me, an unsurpassed technology in digital display.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoThis is why I like my Ubiquity AP and my Sonoff wifi relays with Espurna firmware - I can programatically switch them off, on etc.
- hilbert42 6y agoDecades ago when I was training I was lucky enough to work under a very smart engineer who taught me that the ergonomics of indicators and how people interact with them was important (and thus ergonomics itself is also an important part of engineering). The issue arose after I raised the question about why the indicator lights on the racks of communications equipment that we were developing in our prototype laboratory did not light up when the power was applied. He explained that in large plants such as a telephone exchange where there were hundreds of racks of essentially identical equipment that the only important indicator when all the equipment was working was a lit green bezel at the base of the rack immediately above the plinth to indicate that the rack had power. Thus a tech peering down a row of racks all of whose bezels were alight was informed immediately that all those racks were working. If a bezel was not lit then power to that rack had failed. Indicators on individual items of equipment in the racks remained off unless a fault developed within the unit upon which a red indicator would light up. Maintenance and faultfinding was much quicker if the presence of a light indicated a fault rather than no light at all. If the tech peered down a row of racks and saw a red light he knew exactly where the fault was located. This went hand in hand with what's known as the fuse indicate which is a led or globe in series with a resistor and wired across a fuse. Only when the fuse failed would the fault light appear (because of its simplicity such indicators are highly reliable). Simply, using too many indicators is confusing. Unfortunately, these days, the baubles, bangles and beads brigade of designers who use leds for just about everything has never understood this. Similarly that green indicators should be used to indicate power is present and red to indicate fault. Unfortunately, no one bothers with these conventions anymore. The Christmas tree panels in submarines and in just-in-time manufacturing plants are similarly designed—strategically located/placed lights on the panels only light up to indicate trouble (such as water breaching a watertight compartment, etc.). I've never understood why such an important subject as human ergonomics isn't mandatory in university engineering degrees.
- rstuart4133 6y agoThat reminds me of the original Unix philosophy: programs should succeed silently, issuing (error) messages only on failure. You had to add a --verbose flag to get it to tell you what it had done. I'm not sure how it arose, but one observation is even in the beginning the Unix world was full of shell scripts. If every command that shell script ran was chatty, the average shell script would overwhelm you very quickly with noise.
- primis 6y agoI have a small RGB to YPbPr adapter that I use for my old TV which had a alarmingly bright high intensity blue LED on it for seemingly no reason (it's just a few op amps and resistors in an enclosure). I opened it up and removed the offending light source and have been happier since. Honestly the amount of Power on/standby lights in my house is staggering
- mnm1 6y agoMasking tape it's going to be then. It's interesting how such design choices really highlight the lack of design that happens with most products, consumer, pro, or otherwise. My tv has a red led that is on when the tv is off. Clearly not a single second of actual thought was given to this design. I don't need a light to tell me the screen is off. Almost all appliances with a light are the same way. Designed completely without thought to their practical use and consequences. Now that we know about the negative effects of light, energy saving led bulbs look extremely unattractive. I'm definitely not going to fill my house with them just to save a few bucks and contribute a minuscule and irrelevant reduction in greenhouse gasses. Apple used to be egregious with their lighted Apple logo on the back of its laptops. Talk about unnecessary bothersome light. Sony and their PlayStation controllers with interminable bright blue light is another example. And then there's the thousands of other manufacturers who just copy designs without a single thought to how they might negatively affect the user. On the plus side. Sonos lets me turn off the light on their speakers and it's a very dim white light to begin with but a blessing indeed.
- northwest65 6y agoYes yes and yes. I have a box of cheap self adhesive dots for the purpose. They're so cheap that the average blue light bleeds through them slightly, so anything I actually do want to have an indicator I use one for, everything else gets two. I always assumed those Apple logos were just using the screen backlight rather than utilising an additional LED just for the logo.
- perilunar 6y agoYeah they are. If you have sun shining directly on the back of the screen you can see the apple logo on the screen as the sunlight passes through the backlight.
- 01100011 6y agoLEDs are cheap. It would be awesome to replace them in many applications with a cheap, reliable indicator which doesn't emit light but to my knowledge something like this doesn't exist. Flip discs don't seem like they'd be reliable or cheap enough for a consumer product. What you'd want is almost something like a single pixel e-Ink dot. AFAIK, no one makes such a thing, and even if they did, it probably would cost 4-5x an LED.
- jjoonathan 6y ago> It would be awesome to replace ... Replace? You're thinking too hard! Just delete the lights! Delete all the buttons, too, except for one! Make the user enter morse code into the button for all operations without any indication whatsoever of internal device state except a nondescript failure 30 seconds later! User experience! Design!
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoI see you're familiar with the Apple design paradigm. Remove functionality and call it a feature. Have you reserved your MacBook Wheel yet? https://youtu.be/9BnLbv6QYcA https://youtu.be/9BnLbv6QYcA
- adrianmonk 6y agoNon-backlit LCD is a possibility. If you need several indicators, you can combine them into one LCD. The downside is they are hard to read, especially cheap ones and especially at weird angles.
- Marsymars 6y agoI'm sure I own some product with a non-backlit LCD where you can push a button to have the backlight turn on, which times out after some time. Can't for the life of me remember what product that's in though.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
- GekkePrutser 6y agoIt's mainly Cheap D-Brand Chinese hardware like external harddrive enclosures that really take the biscuit IMO. For some reason these use ultrabright non-diffused blue LEDS that leave a big blue spot on the wall across the room even in moderate darkness :P They're still stuck in the early 2000's "Wow cool blue LED" era. However, I usually end up fixing that with a bit of black electrical tape. Overal indicators don't bother me. One of them (which was not even a D-brand but more like B-brand: StarTech), I covered once with a Post-It note because I couldn't find electrical type quickly (and the benefit was you could still see the light somewhat). A month or so later I took it off and found that the paper had gone all white from being blasted by the UV light in the blue LED :P Definitely don't want all that in my eyes. I really don't know why they do it.
- freehunter 6y ago>They're still stuck in the early 2000's "Wow cool blue LED" era. I wish gaudy LEDs were relegated to the early 2000s... seems they're becoming more common in consumer hardware even in high end items. Just a few months ago I was struggling to find a computer case that wasn't slathered in horrible LEDs and finally settled on one that just had LEDs covering the fans, I just bought new fans (which its also hard to find fans that aren't covered in LEDs). A lot of people like that "RGB life".
- gregoriol 6y agoRemember when LaCie had this huge blue light/button on their drives? (thankfully you could turn it off)
- GekkePrutser 6y agoOoh yes those big extruded aluminium ones with the huge round button. I never had one of those :) I have to admit I kinda enjoy my 'skyline' of flickering lights in my network 'cabinet'. Switches, modems (fibre and 4G backup), a unify router, my home automation raspberry. It really makes it feel like stuff is working away there. But these are all red, orange and green. I have a special hate for those harsh blue LEDs. For some reason they really irritate me.
- 6y ago
- halotrope 6y agoIt would be nice if the root cause was solved. Until that happens I just put a bit of black electrical tape on annoying indicators. Especially on my notebook with OLED screen, which emits next to no light when in terminal/dark mode, the power indicator (white LED) was incredibly bright and quite distracting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- paulie_a 6y agoYes There is no reason to have an off light. Don't get me started on the useless beeps and talking everything seems to do. It's amazing how many things beep for no fing reason.
- irrational 6y agoI don't have an issue with them, unless they are in my bedroom. I need absolute dark to sleep, so anything with an LED indicator in my room gets some black duct tape over it.
- em-bee 6y agoi had this one device that had such an obnoxiously bright blue led that it would almost light up the whole room, once the eyes got used to the dark. completely unnecessary.
- popotamonga 6y agoMy asus router has a phyical button to turn the leds on/off.
- elric 6y agoI suffer from migraines. And like many migraineurs, I am very sensitive to light even when I'm not having a migraine. Given that ~15% of humanity gets migraines, and many of them are (to some degree) in the same boat as me, I find this obsession with bright & blinking lights utterly appalling. It's negatively effecting millions of people, with hardly benefit. Useless bright lights are everywhere. Often without any way to tone them down or turn them off. I don't mind getting funny looks for wearing sunglasses on cloudy days, but I don't want to wear sunglasses indoors ... and yet people keep slapping more and more LEDs on absolutely everything. I have little globs of Blu Tack all over my house, covering LEDs on the most ridiculous appliances. Stop it. Just. Bloody. Stop. How hard can it be for a product designer to ask the question "does this LED convey useful information?", and just scrap the bloody thing if the answer is no?
- hilbert42 6y agoCheck my post out about using nail varnish to cover up the LEDs. But the design problem is much, much bigger than just gaudy LEDs. There are so many electronic appliances (and software UIs, etc.) around that have been designed by people without any skills whatsoever in design or without any understanding in user ergonomics. It's a serious problem even from a secondary perspective, as it so annoys people that they chuck equipment away before its use-by date which only adds to the mountains of e-waste. I have several set-top boxes (PVRs) with software that is so dreadfully bad (not to mention full of serious software bugs) that I consider these appliances close to being unusable.
- freehunter 6y agoI have a stereo that has had a bit of modeling clay on its power button since the day I bought it (in 2003) because in some really smart design choice, the power button lights up red to let you know it's off. When the stereo is on, the light turns off but the display screen lights up. So even turning the power off to get rid of the lights in the room merely just turns a different light on.
- kaybe 6y agoThere is one single place that design choice makes sense, and that is the light switch in the kitchen, bathroom or hallway.
- mark-r 6y agoI always find it funny when I see a claim that blue LEDs were invented in the 1990s. My 1985 VW Golf used one for the high beam indicator.
- reaperducer 6y agoMy 1984 VW Rabbit had a high beam indicator that looked like a blue LED, but it was actually just a super-bright regular light bulb behind a blue piece of plastic.
- mNovak 6y agoYou can tell old car dash indicators are not LED because they actually put off a lot of heat
- rtkwe 6y agoMy trick for really annoying ones is Kapton tape. They amber color really cuts down on the passed blue light but you can still see them. If one layer isn't enough you can add a second layer.
- knolax 6y agoAs someone who sleeps with the lights on I don't get what the fuss is about.
- touristtam 6y agoAnd then you have the cell/mobile phone devices that have done without this simple trick for notifications. Do I need to wake the screen to know I have a new message or a new emai? I wish I didn't.
- cbanek 6y agoI seriously hate LEDs on things. Please at least turn the LED off after a while, or have some mode to do it. My logitech speakers in my bedroom have a blue light on the volume knob, which is meant to sit on a desk or table. I had to put two layers of electrical tape on that one to block it out it was so bright. Without that it would light up an entire room. (Then again, I am somewhat light sensitive)
- dorkwood 6y agoThis is one of my main pet peeves with modern life. I've never seen it discussed before, and no one I've brought it up with seems to share my annoyance. It's currently the middle of the day, and my microphone has a visibly bright blue LED that I can't disable without dismantling it or unplugging it. When I turn my monitor off at night, it has a flashing white LED, presumably to assure me that it is in standby for when I wake back up and decide to turn my computer on again. A note for any readers: to disable this LED, you need to turn the monitor off by navigating through the menu and choosing 'monitor off', and not by hitting the power button itself. My router and modem light up the other side of my apartment with red and blue flashing lights. The solution seems to be to cover everything up with unsightly black tape. That will solve everything except for the microphone, which has its LED buried deep within its bowels somewhere.
- nelgaard 6y agoI use black tape too. It is getting worse and worse. Now that we have USB-C cables with electronics in them they just cannot resist adding a LED light. But Why? I especially hate getting a hotel room late at night and discovering that it is full of LEDs at odd places where you cannot just socks over them.
- hilbert42 6y agoA simple solution and less obvious than tape is to paint over the LED (dob it) with nail varnish. Depending on the applied thickness, the LED can be blanked out completely or simply just attenuated to your desired amount. (The tiny brush that comes with the varnish is just ideal for the purpose.) The nail varnish can be diluted with varnish remover or when necessary just removed by it. HOWEVER BE CAREFUL - TEST AN INCONSPICUOUS PART OF THE SURFACE OF YOUR APPLIANCE WITH BOTH THE VARNISH AND REMOVER AS BOTH CONTAIN ACETONE WHICH CAN SOFTEN, MARK OR DISSOLVE PLASTIC. Incidentally, I keep a range of nail varnishes of various colors in the workshop, they're very useful for locking the position of coil slugs and potentiometers, and the varnish can be snap-broken without damage to the components (and nail varnish is usually easier to obtain than coil dope). ANOTHER WARNING — BUY YOUR OWN (DON'T STEAL IT FROM YOUR BETTER HALF OR YOU'LL BE IN DEEP YOU-KNOW-WHAT (I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE)).
- fortran77 6y agoI frequently paint over LEDs with black nail polish
- hilbert42 6y agoExactly! (See my comment above.)
- ciceryadam 6y agoMildly related, in the chapter Blinkenlights, Michal Zalewski describes the led indicator technology, and how it can be used for passive reconnaissance of serial data: https://nostarch.com/download/silence_ch05.pdf https://nostarch.com/download/silence_ch05.pdf
- VLM 6y agoSomething no one discusses is this is part of the death of brick and mortar retail. In the 70s you'd go to a warehouse-superstore for electronics lit by incandescent bulbs or maybe old school buzzy flicker fluorescents and it was DARK as electricity cost money. By the turn of the century its all palaces of consumerism bright lit with modern florescent bulbs. Now a days the remaining electronics stores sometimes have bright as heck LED illumination. The stores are more brightly lit than most homes; a device bright enough to stand out on a showroom floor as the bright one will be blinding in an average home. As brick and mortar retail dies out, somewhat more sane levels of illumination will be acceptable in products. Even now, its already getting to the point that nobody cares about the stylish box if amazon is going to deliver it anyway.