Slashdot Mirror
The Blues for LEDs
Corey Burger writes "Seems somebody rolled out of bed on the wrong side today. The Globe and Mail's Ian Johnson delivers up a rant about the ubiquity of the new blue LEDs."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Sounds like this guy has too many new expensive gadgets that he should send to someone who appreciates it more.
In any event, isn't unification what we're looking for now in computing? Isn't it a nice thing (that has spun an entire cottage-industry of mods and such) that we can get our computer "look and feel" to match our decor? To match itself, for that matter? Looking around my desk, I see some green, red, yellow, and orange LEDs. I would be tickled if they could all be more unified. With, of course, the exception of my HDD LEDs, which I like to be able to notice out of the corner of my eye.
Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the (pre-)Mondays. ;)
I'm a fan of blue LED's, but I'm kinda getting sick of them, they're everywhere. Companies need to realise that there are other colours too... why don't we see more purple ones (I did have a burner that had a purple one, but that's the only device I've seen that came with one)? Or maybe a light green rather than the regular boring green?
Looking around, I can't see any blue LEDs. There is one blue light on my Bluetooth docking station, which might be an LED, but it's covered by a clouded plastic button, so I can't tell, and it certainly isn't bright. Does anyone else have as many blue LEDs around them as thing guy says he does?
First I don't believe his list of items. I buy a lot of high tech items and unless I just bought everything new yesterday and hunted around for blue LED versions of products, I don't think I could gather a list of devices so extensive, all with blue LEDs.
That said....unless someone gives him all his devices for free then geesh just buy different devices! If you are getting all your devices for free and then you have the nerve to complain about the color of the LED then shut your friggin pie hole before I give you a punch in the throat.
It's those Xenon HID headlights I hate. You know, the ultra-bright, kinda bluish ones that blind you late at night as they come around the curve. Those seem bright enough to be unsafe.
It's a matter of popularity. We've seen red, green, yellow and amber colored LED's since some 30 years now, they're "passe". Blue LED's on the other hand (as well as White and Cyan) are colors that have become possible just 10 years ago, and they where still very expensive and not really efficient. It's in the last 4 or 5 years, that techology has allowed cheap, efficient and bright blue LED's.... maybe that's why they seem to look so.... cool!
Just the other day, one of my friends just got a new Nextel and the mobile DC cigarette lighter plug has this annoyingly bright Blue LED on it. He's pissed, says it totally destroys his night vision and it's about 100x brighter than it needs to be to verify the cigarette lighter adapter is bottomed out.
I remember when Blue LED's were first introduced in the April 1 issue of Byte Magazine (sometime around 1987 IIRC) as an April Fool's joke! Finally, two or three years later they were actually invented!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
As for the color, the blue LED does mark the quantum barrier surpassed by nichia a decade or so ago.
Now, roughly 10 years after the introducion of the first practical blue LEDs, we see a whole range of LED products based on the leap made at that time. For example, UV leds are becoming more and more common, and find applications in money checkers, forensics and scientific appliances.
Also, LEDs are becoming very usefull light sources in torches, automotive (brake)lights, traffic signals etc. etc.
Also, keep in mind that many other colors of LED are based on the work by Nichia.. new bright green leds are, white leds are (using a blue led and a phosphor), and also advances in red and yellow leds were achieved.
I think that idicators are just an over the top use of a technology that will bring us more and more interesting light-emitting devices for all kinds of uses.
Single-person boycotts don't work.
Individuals deciding what they do and don't like then buying what they like and not what they don't is exactly how markets do normally work.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
no-one buys an item because of its LED colour, or if it has them ata ll - you buy by the spec/brand/etc. It just so happens that they all have blue leds nowadays, so telling him to buy a different product is useless advice.
Telling him how to take theproduct apart and replace the led with a different colour one... now that's the kind of answer I like.
I'm sure that blue LEDs will fade in time. They were cool because they were new and rare. But novelty, by defintion, cannot last. Just wait a few years and everyone will think that blue LED are just so so early 2000's.
Of course, by then we'll have some other over-used new display technology. Perhaps consumer electronics makers will use OLEDs to form a glowing full-color brand name logos. Then the space around our desktops and dens will look like a miniture cityscape with tiny glowing neonesque billboards for all the brands that we buy.
Oh, and wait 20-40 years and blue LEDs will be back as a retro fad. The aging youth of today will look back to this time and will revel in the glory days when devices only had a single simple little blue light.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It really pisses me off.
The Blue sky has a piercing clarity that draws the eye immediately, and which can mesmerize. And at night, the stars shimmer, they twinkle, and they can be incredibly intense for such tiny points of light -- they're really quite beautiful. The problem is they're suddenly everywhere.
Sorry...I must've rolled out of bed the wrong side too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I tend to agree with the guy, personally. Blue LEDs, because they're usually stupidly bright, get really irritating, really fast.
;-)
There are great uses for them - for example, my new keyring light is one, and I can not only see to open doors etc but could probably blind a mugger permanantly as well
I think the use of super-bright blue LEDs for indicator lights is rather silly, though. I've replaced a couple in hardware I own, and put electrical tape over a couple of others I can't easily replace, because they were really god dammn annoying.
My PC sits in the living room (connected to the TV), and I used to have to put something in front of it if we were going to watch a film to avoid blinding anyone on the opposite side of the room. The power LED produces almost as much light as my 19" monitor. This is stupid.
As for posters who say "don't buy things with blue LEDs then" - (a) often you don't know until you've installed it, and (b) it's downright stupid to have to select devices based on whether or not the power light will drill a hole through your skull, instead of minor things like reliability or required features.
The Blue LED howto:
Part 1 - dimming.
1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up some masking tape.
2. Cut a piece sufficiently large to cover the offending LED
3. Place the tape over the LED
4. Repeat from step 2 until the LED is sufficiently dim.
Part 2 - Blocking
1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up a nice hammer drill and a drill bit of similar diameter as the LED
2. Turn the device with the LED off.
3. Drill the shit out of the LED*
*Or, drill the shit out of your eyes. Therefore, removing the need to block any other blue LEDS that you may have on your "look at me I am a techy" gadgets.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Ian Johnson, I feel your pain. Why, just the other day, my butler Jeeves remarked to me, "Sir, I find myself incapable of sleeping ever since you installed your 100" plasma computer monitor. The blue LED keeps me up all night."
And I'm regretting giving the cleaning staff new blue-LED-equipped brooms last week. Those hundreds of dancing broom-handles put me in such a dreadful mood. How can I concentrate on exploiting those massively regressive tax-cuts when all those lights keep dancing in my brain?
Indeed.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
HEY!!!
I stick valve stem lights on my tires.... My motorcycle tires, that is.
I bought a set of white tire lights and replaced the LED's with 10000mcd whites and now my motorcycle can be seen more easily at night by traffic in the next lane.
You'd be suprised how invisible you are on a motorcycle at night without sufficient side lighting. Now people can at least see rings of bright white light from my wheels. I've even noticed less of a tendency of people trying to pull over into my lane thinking nothing was there. Then again, if the morons would remove the supposedly "cool looking" dark filters off of their headlights, they might see the reflection off the chrome.
As far as expensive gadgets go, the Shuttle SB75G2 has a blue power LED that lights up my ENTIRE LIVING ROOM when pitch black. The room is lit with a ghastly blue hue just enough to where you can navigate after shutting out all the rest of the light.
:(
This guy is right on target with this new "blue" craze because it's starting to take the coolness out of all the things I've custom modded with blue LEDs
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
... I saw this story accompanied by a ThinkGeek add for a "cool new LED clock" - blue, naturally :)
Have you ever stood in front of a SUN Fire 6800 cabinet? They have a big sucker of a SUN logo illuminated by those blue LEDs...
:-)
So shiny... Happy happy happy... Must drool and watch... can't resist...
I'm still waiting for the Octalus-like big mouth with needle-sharp fangs coming out of the cabinet snatching for my head
Yalla.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
I don't need a bright blue blast visually screaming "HEY! YOU! EVERYTHING'S OK! I'M STILL ON!" all day long.
The article was worth it because this line reminded me of Homer's Everything's OK Alarm:
BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEP, IT WILL KEEP GOING, BEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, EVERY 5 SECONDS, BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, UNLESS EVERYTHING'S NOT OK, BEEEEEEEP.
Now I'm going to spend all day searching through Simpsons tapes trying to find that episode.
At any rate, hasn't this guy heard of duct tape?
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
>2. Turn the device with the LED off.
>3. Drill the shit out of the LED*
4. Turn the device back on, and find out if the LED was actually part of an important circuit as well as being an indicator.
Alternate step 3: Use black electrical tape to cover the LED. Peel it back off when you're taking the eBay photos a couple years from now.
Blue LEDs aren't the only ones that can be irritatingly bright - I was in Prague a couple of weeks ago, and the LEDs on the thermostat were so bright that they lit up the hotel room at night! I had to put a sticker over them so that they would stop burning my retinas so that I could sleep. He's right - why do they need such bright lights for something that I don't normally care about, e.g. the mood of the heating system at the time?
My theory is that it's a selling point on the sales floor - I imagine that a lot of customers, like me, gravitate towards the shiniest and/or brightest option.
~Ben
Even better:
1. Disassemble device
2. Locate offending LED
3. Apply heat (solder iron) and remove LED
4. If so desired, replace it with an LED of different color using the solder iron and resin.
5. Reassemble device
$cat
Paint works well too...
Even a sharpie marker..
Choose a blue color and you can still have your light, at a reduced amount of luminosity..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The attraction is that for many years blue LEDs were nearly impossible to fabricate. Next, they were expensive and inefficient. Next, just expensive. Now, the old problems are gone and they have the highest light output per watt of all LEDs, and they're filling a pent-up demand dating back three decades.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
One of the best waste of money I have found in a long time. Its even a feature of the watch that blue LEDs are the second most expensive LEDs you can get.
Pimpin aint easy watch by PIMP
A note that came with the watch said the battery only lasts 6-9 months if I need to know the time 15 times a day but who cares when you have such a rockin wrist peice.
Apple kit comes with white LEDs. The worst one is the one on the front which indicates the machine is in standby mode by gently pulsating. The problem with this is that it's really hypnotic. First the machine goes into standby mode, then my brain does...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Then why can't I find a single pair of pants that don't have those fucking ridiculous "stonewashed" bleach stains all over them?
Then why can't I find a single pair of pants that don't have those fucking ridiculous "stonewashed" bleach stains all over them?
Cause you are not looking hard enough. Get out of the GAP and you might find plenty of denims in normal colors.
No sig
4a. Replace corresponding series resistor.
Blue LEDs typically have a forward voltage greater than standard red/green/yellow ones. If you don't use a correctly-calculated series resistor, a lower voltage LED will receive more current and become a super-high-tech Black LED shortly after powerup.
I got an M-Audio Firewire 410 soundcard and the blue LED was beyond obnoxious. It was MUCH brighter than the red and green LEDs on the thing, by several times. Since it is the power LED, it was ALWAYS on. Also, if you powered the unit down, but left it connected to Firewire, it would proceed to blink at you, very frequently. I had put a peice of masking tape over it to dampen the light (and I could still see it through that). Finally, however, it just broke, and I'm not sending it in for service.
It's not the use of blue LEDs that bothers me, it's how damn bright most of them are. An indicator that my gear is turned on is nice. An indicator that my gear is turned on that I can see from outside at night (makes the room glow blue) is more than just a bit of overkill.
ever hook up a stock LED to the power pack taken out of a polaroid camera.... LED went bright, then dim, then exploded hitting me above the eye with a chunk of plastic...
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
They sell pants under their own brand called Member's Mark. They are nice, plain, dark blue jeans. They are also well made and like $13/pair.
4. If so desired, replace it with an LED of different color using the solder iron and resin.
And watch your new LED smoulder after a while. Blue LEDs trigger at 3.2 volts as compared to 0.7 volts for red and green LEDs. You also need to place a larger resistance in series with it, which is at best hardto do on a PCB that wasn't designed for it.
I vague recall seeing LEDs with curren-limiting resistances built in though somewhere, so make sure you use one of those.
The color, though, is correct. The standard NEMA rules for indicator colors, used on industrial gear for decades, are
-
GREEN Normal status.
-
AMBER Abnormal status. Operator should be aware that an amber lamp is lit.
-
RED Trouble status. Operator should take action to make the red light go out.
-
BLUE or WHITE On, or other non-specific meaning.
So blue and white are actually the default colors. Red should be used only for trouble indicators. We're still getting over the cheap red LED glut of the 1980s, when everything had red LEDs.Anything that rackmounts should follow these rules. It's not only annoying, but a headache, to have red lights for non-trouble conditions in a rack of equipment. IBM always has.
6. ....
7. Profit!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
If he doesn't like blue LEDs, then he didn't really need to buy a new monitor, handheld scanner, webcam, USB hub, Bluetooth access point, WiFi adapter, desktop volume control for his speakers, external hard drive, video editing peripheral, keyboard, home theatre, wireless music gateway, USB keychain drive, and portable MP3 player, all apparently in the "recent months".
Ignoring the quantity of his purchases, it *is* really annoying that so many different devices, presumably from different manufacturers, would all be so-festooned.
But what really irks me is the idiots who put blue lights all over their cars - usually silly little Honda cars with 3" diameter coffee can exhaust tips (despite the 1" diameter pipe coming from the puny little 1.6L engine).
Blue side markers, taillights, parking lights? Non-conformant with SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers, look closely at your taillight lenses) standardized coloring and therefore dangerous. Illegal. Police should be cracking down on these the way they used to crack down on 50's hot-rodders who were putting the blue dots into their red taillights.
LEDs (especially blue) on calipers, brake rotors, rims, windshield washer nozzles - what are you, stupid? It might have looked a little neat the first time someone did it, but now it's every home-boy who doesn't know how to put on a baseball cap who is doing it. Why would you spend your money being a brainless clone, when instead you could save it to put a real motor into your Civic? (Now, if you've got a Civic with a 4-bolt mains Chevy 350 under the hood, *then* I'll be impressed - takes a little more skill to do that than to put silly lights on the car.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Ah, yes, the old "all diodes are light emitting . . . once" rule of electronics.
Nathan's blog