3 ms·
Oh, I remember when blue LEDs became readily available (late 90s for me) and I would mod all my stuff to blue. Had this MS ergo keyboard, with the LEDs in the
by edoceo 6y ago
Oh, I remember when blue LEDs became readily available (late 90s for me) and I would mod all my stuff to blue.
Had this MS ergo keyboard, with the LEDs in the middle hump, came with green. So, I replaced with these 2.5 hi-blues and I was blinded by my own Numlock-Beam. Had to cross a resistor over there to take the edge off.
Anyway, I think HN should get a black-bar because the blue LED is so cool.
- Aardwolf 6y agoI found myself taping over some blue LEDs because they were so bright at night!
- randrews 6y agoI have a laptop charger with one that I taped over with kapton tape: the orange kapton is almost the exact opposite of the blue LED so you're left with a dim white indicator, no blinding brightness.
- boomlinde 6y agoI hate them with a passion for this reason but on second thought maybe I can't really blame it on the LEDs themselves. People seem to give them too much forward voltage and don't always use diffusing packaging, which would have made them much more pleasant to look at. Then again, I rarely see such problems with products with red or amber LEDs. I have a synthesizer with blue LEDs that's particularly obnoxious. It's probably feeding them 5V and there's of course no diffusion at all. I've taped all of them over with a layer of duck tape and they're still too bright.
- bawolff 6y agoAllegedly blue LEDs are supposed to be really disruptive to sleep (not just due to brightness but due to wavelength. Body interprets blue as daylight and red dusk or something)
- httpsterio 6y agoWell, you're right sort off. Blue light is related to the production of melatonin, which is used regulate our sleep cycle. Blue light (aka shorter waveforms) blocks the melatonin production, most likely a genetic factor as the blue wavelength is related to the sun's day cycle.
- samstave 6y agoSo as to keep one more alert during daylight hours, and ready to exert energy?
- michaelcampbell 6y agoIt's long, but if you're into it this podcast (episodes 2-5) go into some lengthy research and discussion into it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPNW_gerXa4NjSNbZhpSDLXDHukNcp0JZ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPNW_gerXa4NjSNbZhpSD...
- michaelcampbell 6y agoYes, it's why SAD therapy lights are blue-ish.
- banana_giraffe 6y agoI actually bought a little sheet of circle neutral density filters sticker things to cover a ton of these LEDs in my world.
- bamboozled 6y agoStill do this all the time
- astrange 6y agoI used to have the all transparent plastic Harmon Cardon speakers (iSub?) but I had to get rid of it because the power lights were so bright. And since it was transparent you couldn't cover them up.
- michaelcampbell 6y agoYeah, I feel sorry for this man's family and loved ones, but I wish he'd never invented the damn things. Blue light scatters in air more than non-blue, and it's just garish to look at.
- jeffwass 6y agoYou wouldn’t have white LED lighting or any of the mixed colours that include blue (eg cyan or purple) without his contribution. Don’t blame the inventor for the bad applications of companies. Just like you wouldn’t blame Alexander Graham Bell for telemarketer spam.
- gertlex 6y agoI did the same thing to my Dell laptop in college when purple LEDs first became available. And a year or so prior to that (when my google results were still fruitless), I swapped blue LEDs in like you, and got a purple-ish result by putting some pink paper between the LED and the numlock icon (or whichever it was). I was fascinated to find that the paper faded to white after a few weeks as a result. These days I like yellow, but am lazy and just put kapton tape over the white LEDs on my desktop...
- baybal2 6y agoPanasonic initially picked a teal LED for its notebook because it was really, really expensive back in nineties. Few percents of the laptop cost was that single power LED. The legend is that they secured an exclusivity agreement with Nichia for that colour for some years, but the reality is much likelly be it just being expensive, and hard to source.
- m_mueller 6y agoWorst one for me is on an older pair of Sony's flagship NC headphones. Putting them on at night is like flying a plane with landing lights on, and of course it shines right in the face of my partner.