Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fixing annoying blue standby lights

fullcircuit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 257 posts

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#151

Post by kiwijamo »

carlosjobim wrote: post #92
TacticalCoder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Red doesn't bother the eyes in a dark environment.

Unfortunately it does bother me. It's so bad I must turn off or at least cover red LEDs before I can sleep. E.g. TVs. Thankfully for our bedroom TV we recently switched to a Sony TV recently which doesn't seem to have a standby LED at all – such a godsend as it can be turned off simply by pressing the remote and it turns off without a standby LED.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#152

Post by AnotherGoodName »

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.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#154

Post by dexterdog »

kiwijamo wrote: post #151
carlosjobim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red doesn't bother the eyes in a dark environment.

Unfortunately it does bother me. It's so bad I must turn off or at least cover red LEDs before I can sleep. E.g. TVs. Thankfully for our bedroom TV we recently switched to a Sony TV recently which doesn't seem to have a standby LED at all – such a godsend as it can be turned off simply by pressing the remote and it turns off without a standby LED.

It's not bothering your eyes. It's bothering your brain. In a dark room a red light will not make your eyes lose their ability to quickly see in the dark like the other colors do.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#156

Post by midasuni »

cantSpellSober wrote: post #130
kelahcim wrote: post #122

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 cub…

I've started travelling with a roll of black tape because the problem you describe is so bad

First thing I do is unplug the tv. Been woken too many times by TVs turning themselves on during the night.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#157

Post by jahewson »

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'…

Gotta buy better electrical tape. Scotch Super 33+ is amazing.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#158

Post by btbuildem »

analog31 wrote: post #147
weinzierl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed, red was the first visible LED color to be practical in production. Blue came much later.

Blue LEDs were deemed a huge breakthrough at the time; they enabled full-colour LED displays (think large panels viewed from a distance) by adding the long-missing B in the RGB.

Re: Fixing annoying blue standby lights

#160

Post by mh- »

midasuni wrote: post #156
cantSpellSober wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started travelling with a roll of black tape because the problem you describe is so bad

First thing I do is unplug the tv. Been woken too many times by TVs turning themselves on during the night.

For me it's the alarm clocks or in-room tablets. So much annoying ambient lights in hotels. It's gotten crazy.
Post reply on HN