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A comment on Have we let the LED indicator light go too far?.

Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by ajsnigrutin on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @07:58AM (#23830822)
The 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.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by vidarh on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:18AM (#23830971)
Electrical tape for complete blackout, and little small black dot stickers for LEDs you want to dim instead of completely cover.

For the black dot/circle stickers, just search for "black dot" on Amazon. The 6mm / 1/4 inch ones tends to fit neatly over most LEDs.

The electrical tape is easy enough to remove and reattach or replace for the rare occasion I actually need to see an indicator light.

I thought I'd need to remove it more often when I "snapped" and put electrical tape on every device in my living room a while back, but I've yet to remove a single bit of it. I'm sure I'll have to now and again, but it's worth the hassle.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by Loughla on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @09:14AM (#23831509)
I sleep with a fan at night - when my fan from college finally died after a decade of use, I replaced it with a similar tower fan. It had a nice speed, timer function that went long enough for me to use the auto-shutoff as an alarm clock to avoid being jarred awake by an actual alarm. Oh, and it also had

FIVE, HUGE, BRIGHT BLUE LEDS WHICH WERE ON CONSTANTLY WHEN IT WAS RUNNING.

What idiot thought this was a good idea? Oh, and snipping them from the circuit also made sure the fan wouldn't work in high speed for some reason. So I had to solder a piece of wire from one end of the removed leds to the other.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by vidarh on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @09:29AM (#23831672)
My theory is that the prevalence of blue LEDs to this date is an after-effect of people who grew up back when blue LEDs were rare and expensive, and who came to see blue LEDs as a way of signalling higher value and who got used to wanting to put blue LEDs in everything for that reason long after the signalling effect was lost.

(it was first in the early 90's that bright blue LEDs became available, at least at reasonable price points)

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by jfk13 on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @03:50PM (#23836887)
I suspect there's a lot of truth in this.

This reminds me of going for an interview at Durham University in the early 80s. A professor in the physics department proudly showed me a prototype blue LED that they had developed. It was indeed quite a novelty at that time.

Ah, yes - a quick search confirms there was research in this area going on at the time: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/16/6/02...

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by hilbert42 on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @10:50AM (#23845961)
Undoubtedly I agree with both of you. Unfortunately, since the introduction of blue LEDs little thought has been given to the way people react to them. From my experience, they seem to raise the most criticism of all colored indicators.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by kaybe on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @06:31PM (#23838864)
I have an air filter with the same similarly bright blue LEDs. But, it has a night mode which you specifically have to enable each time where those are turned off. So the people who designed this thought of this problem and still wanted to have the overly-bright LEDs with no function. I don't quite understand.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by bokwoon on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @04:05PM (#23837107)
Ha, I used to have a shirt draped around the neck of the fan for this exact reason. Didn't work too well, some of the light still bled through
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by black_puppydog on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @09:02AM (#23831387)
I find that most tapes are not blacking out everything I want, and often light can leak through the cases of cheap equipment. For those cases I usually use a combination of tape (of any kind) with pieces of tin foil underneath, which reliably blocks all the light. Of course make sure to not use it on any contacts, but that's usually not an issue for consumer grade hardware.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by stordoff on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @05:02PM (#23837809)
I ended up putting some tape inside my Hue bridge to block out multiple bright blue LEDs. The cheap tape I used not blocking it completely (even with two or three layers) ended up working out pretty well - they're now _just_ bright enough to see if you need to check the status, but even in a dark room they won't catch your eye unless you're looking directly at them.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by nick_meister on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:41AM (#23831154)
This! I also use electrical tape for complete blackout, and paper tape for dimming.

On a side note, also black electrical tape for laptop camera covering :)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by kqr on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:59AM (#23831357)
Sound like it might also be an option to take a pin and poke a tiny aperture into the electrical tape over the lights you do want to see, only dim down.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by vidarh on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @09:31AM (#23831701)
That'd probably work fine too, but anywhere where I care about appearance I need to cut the electrical tape while the dot stickers are available in just the right size for fractions of a penny per sticker, so I have what appears to be a lifetime supply of stickers anyway.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by Marsymars on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:21PM (#23839780)
I did this for LEDs, and I also took the opportunity to cover up all the logos on my electronics/appliances. It's nice having my home now be entirely free of Samsung/Sonos/Apple/Dell/etc. logos.

Took several different colours and types of tape to get everything looking nice.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by kqr on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:06AM (#23830872)
Would 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.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by gregoriol on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @06:15PM (#23838683)
Yes! My internet box has this and it's practical: one button turns on and off the status LEDs. They are off mostly, and on on boot or rare times I need to check the status.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by input_sh on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @04:55PM (#23837733)
> I literally never look at them when all is ok, but when it's not, i get the status info in literally a second.

I'd say this is an argument for simply not having them on until something goes wrong.

I'm fortunate enough that almost all LEDs in my living room are dimmed green, with the exceptions being my speaker set with a very bright blue (covered with a black tape, they're always on anyway), and my external monitor (dim white, not on when in standby).

Unfortunately, my Thinkpad has an annoying blue power indicator and I can't keep my mic turned off via a keyboard shortcut since that turns on another blue LED. Especially annoying when the night light turns on.

Nice username BTW!

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by Too on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @07:29AM (#23843731)
My router has 4 ethernet ports, 3 of them have cables plugged in. One of the cables are broken. One of the computers on the other end lost it's power. I want a cheap router and i don't want to configure which ports that are supposed to be in use. How many error-leds do you expect to be flashing?
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by agumonkey on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:33AM (#23831090)
Same goes for usb keys.. they used to come with leds and then not anymore. Sometimes you'd like to know if the IO layer is blocked or if it's just slow pace.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by albertsondev on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @12:31AM (#23841326)
The ones I pick up in the checkout line at Microcenter still have I/O indicators (on top of being phenomenally inexpensive). It's a shame that more don't anymore.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by agumonkey on Saturday July 18, 2020 @02:10PM (#23883422)
I wanted to make a usb ring with task is only to be a data / power line activity led you plug other stuff in
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by snarf21 on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @04:10PM (#23837154)
The interesting question is, could it work the other way? Light up ones that aren't on in red. Light up ones that haven't sent data recently in yellow. I'm not sure what is ideal but the question might be is it more important to indicate success/normal or failure/error?
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by liamdiprose on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @07:40PM (#23839454)
Who uses the indicator lights? - people looking behind a computer or at switchgear. They aren't regular users, they understand how networks operate and what the green/yellow lights mean. They're typically debugging a problem, for which you want the truest indication of what's happening on the wire.

For regular users who just care about working internet, you can notify the user of connection failure where they look - the screen.

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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by StavrosK on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:06AM (#23830869)
A button or setting that turned the LEDs on/off would probably be prudent.
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Re:Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? by LargoLasskhyfv on Saturday July 18, 2020 @06:25AM (#23880389)
My 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 :-)
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