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Fixing annoying blue standby lights

fullcircuit.com

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Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#131

Post by m463 »

disillusioned wrote: post #98
atticora wrote: post #30

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 review…

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 i…

I have them.

However after a while it became annoying to try to peel the small stickers off the backing, then fumble to center a small sticky thing over the offending LED.

so... I use painters tape. I started with the blue kind, but switched to black. Easy to tear or cut, easy to size. electrical tape isn't sticky enough.

I choose an appropriate number of layers for the problem.

Most lights just need one layer. Sometimes I need to kill the LED directionality to be acceptable. And some indicator lights need to be dim, not off. Think an HDMI switcher where you need to know which port is active, or router port activity lights.

Sometimes I put a second layer when I need less or no light.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#132

Post by efitz »

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.

[1] https://a.co/d/h9QbBRL

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#133

Post by chiph »

efitz wrote: post #132

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. [1] https://…

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.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#135

Post by retrac »

porkbeer wrote: post #111
orenlindsey wrote: post #64

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.

Seems like optimizing for edge cases might not be the most practical.

About 5% of men have some kind of colourblindness. It is common enough I would argue it's good engineering and design to avoid using colour to indicate anything important, particularly when avoidable. Red-green rather than light-dark for intensity maps are particularly infamous. Any time I see one of those posted on a forum and it gets traction, some poor commenter complains at the colour choice because they can't see red-green distinctions. Saw such on HN just the other day.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#137

Post by amluto »

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.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#138

Post by dqv »

xapata wrote: post #125
dqv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

> some kind of signal Low sales is a signal. Also, they can hire a UX researcher.

I realize I wasn't clear about that - these notebooks are well-liked and have tons of positive reviews. There is no low sales signal, because people who don't care about the labels still buy the notebooks. It's that they're missing more sales from the people who don't buy them because of the ugly labels on the front. That would be the same with TVs, the only way a TV maker would really know is if they sold a "bedroom TV" and saw no one was buying it or it was getting a lot of returns for the LED indicators being too bright. Even then, if you have consumers who are cognizant of bright LEDs and can't find any information about it, it might still not be indicated in the sales that certain consumers don't want it.

Will they even know to hire a UX researcher?

But even then, as just a consumer, antireviews would be super helpful.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#139

Post by notatoad »

yugioh3 wrote: post #128
qwertox wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

black gaffer’s tape is perfect for covering LEDs long term without any residue.

maybe i just bought cheap tape, but i've definitely found gaffers tape to leave a residue if left in place for a couple years. especially on electronics that are generating some heat.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#140

Post by TylerE »

qwertox wrote: post #100
atticora wrote: post #30

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 review…

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'…

The really nice thing about electrical tape is that has an extremely high ignition tempature, and strong voltage resistance, so can throw it on stuff that gets hot (in either sense) and not worry about it. I use it to block off the annoying LED "backlighting" on my PS5... that gets warm enough that I'd be nervous about some tapes. Also handy for actual electrical stuff, like that one speaker wire that loves to comeout of the terminal on my stereo if I look at it funny. I've had some strips of it for years and have never had problems with "smearing" or adhesion.
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