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How Do I Disable My Gadgets' LEDs?
pHatidic writes "My college dorm room is never dark, even with the lights turned off. This is because of LEDs. Between the Airport Express, laser printer, surge protector, and Logitech mouse there is the constant nuissance of light polution. The powerbook has to take the cake though, with a green LED built into the power adapter and a white pulsating LED indicating it's in sleep mode so bright that I can actually detect it even with my eyes closed. Short of actually unplugging all of my devices every day, is there any way to disable all of these LEDs so I can actually get some sleep?"
...but this will solve all your problems. And it looks cool, too!
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
Cheap, Effective.
11*43+456^2
Though I can't make any guarantees, I don't think it'll break anything to cut the power to the LED's in the vast majority of cases. But if you'd rather be safe, a very popular and respectable choice, paint or masking tape ought to do the job.
... nuff said.
Why do people insist on running things 24x7...
gus
.. if only.
Black sharpie
It is not the pride that counts, it is the feeling of satisfaction from the completion of a task.
Simple, elegant, no cost involved! :-)
-psy
my light pollution issue was to connect everything to multiple surge protectors. My 21" monitor, system, speakers and sub, camera adapter and charger are connected to a strip on my desk. My wife has all of her gear coneected through a strip on her desk. Then I have the electrical board which contains the DSL modem, D-Link router and NGear switch on it's own strip. At night or if I am going away for a few days, everything goes through a shut down. Boxes go off then all the strips are turned off. Light goes away, and the crickets come out because the noise pollution has gone away as well :-). A definite side benifit that I have noticed over the few months I have been doing this is that my eletrical bill has decreased significantly. Anyway, that what I do and it works for me. Maybe you can experiment a bit and see what might work for you. Cheers.
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
Get a night mask.
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
Since tape is a little harder to cover the small LED's _only_ without making it look ugly, just whop a little bit of bluetack over it.
Aesthetic Geek.
You should really consider connecting everything to a power strip, and then shuting everything down ever night. After starting to do that, I'm saving at least 5 dollars a month on electric bills. Living in the dorms it doesn't really matter, as far as costs go, but it's good to get into the habit.
I've used a black Sharpie marker on LEDs before. It dims the LED and it's not very noticeable, a lot less ugly than duct tape or any kind of tape. Plus you can wash most of it off with rubbing alcohol if you ever want it bright again.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
duck tape
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Q) How to darken LED's
A) Black electrical tape
Mod) +4 insightful
Need I say more...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
You don't have to be that skilled. Heat up iron, poke at the LED. You don't even have to open the case.
Heh.
resigned
What about taping your eyelids? Less tape!
my sig was dubm so i took it out.
Find a roll of Gaffer's Tape. Electrical Tape and Duct Tape both use heavy residue adhesive that can be a pain to remove from plastic. Try using some Gaffer's tape instead. It's far easier to clean up after.
Less Talk, More Beer.
The most offensive LED equipped product I own is a logitech 5.1 channel speaker system... the center channel speaker has a fricking blue laser beam aimed at my left eye.
Gah! My EYE!
Worst. Story. On. Slashdot. EVER.
Here you go, skippy. Get yourself some index cards. Cut off enough to cover twice the length they'll need to cover the LEDs. Fold in half. Now cut off a strip o duct tape and apply half of it to an edge of the paper. Tape just above LEDs.
Now you have something that you can use to cover the LEDs at night by slipping out the bottom part of paper. During the day you can slip the edge of the index card up to hide it.
What? Did you really think that someone was going to track down the arcane (if even possible) instructions on quieting your lights for a myriad of unrelated devices? Holy crap.
My
Limekiller
blindfold.
main(0)
You probably meant "duct" tape. Unless of course you were referring to that special tape huntsmen use to secure their birds to the wall for display...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
How about turning all of that stuff off at night? Do you really need to use your laser printer while you're sleeping? It'll be quieter in your room, to boot!
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
xscreensaver is cool, and the new RSS ports are even cooler, until you accidentally leave on the fireworks one with audio one night.... while the computer is plugged into your sound system instead of headphones. Yea... whoops.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
First of all we have the responses that say 'Do what you told us you don't want to do. Turn the stuff off."
Next up are the 'Cover those lights with some sort of tape that will leave a residue that pretty much can't be washed off.' with variations such as 'use a black sharpy or other marker'
Of course you have the other variations on this, such as the 'post-it' notes, or other obstructions directly attached to the device.
Lastly you find the people advocating taking the equipment appart and (in most cases) desoldering the led's, or clipping their leads.
So, Rusty0101, what kind of solution do you have?
Regardless of whether the monitor you have is a flat panle LCD, plasma, or CRT, in most cases you don't need it on when you are trying to sleep, and if it isn't integrated into a computer you want left on 24x7, you can probably turn it off.
For the equipment that you want placed up high, but don't want to see the lights from, get the rough dimmensions, then head to a dollar store, or possibly a household goods store, and pick up some opaque storage boxes to put them in. Plastic and cardboard are often opaque to light, but transparent to microwave frequencies, so your 802.11abg equipment should continue to run just fine. If you are concerned about heat, place a piece of black paper over the equipment and leave the box top off. Remember to lable the box so you know what's in it, and if there is room for other stuff as well.
That nice bright light on the front of the laptop? While you are at the dollar store, pick up a plate holder. When you are done with the laptop for the day, and fold it up, set it in the plateholder so that the front led is facing down, (behind a book or something.) If you have a power book, or something with leds at the back of it instead, find (or get your craft inclined so to make) a laptop sleeve that you put your laptop in, and which wraps around any plugs that generate light.
Base computers? If you assemble your own, you know how to disable the leds on the front. This doesn't help for those nice self lit cooling fans, but we'll get to that. Ok for those, get the dimensions of your pc, and make a wooden box with a light baffled slot at the top back of the box, open most of the bottom, and get a 9" fan fitted to that opening, drawing air from below. Filter this properly so you are not picking up all kinds of dirt. Make sure that the holes for cables is also light baffled, and can be accessed easily with the top of the box off. I personally recomend lining the insides of this box with egg separators to baffle the noise as well, but that's your business.
Mice. Get or make a black box, just large enough to drop the mouse into, and just deep enough to hide the led. Replace your mouse with a trackball. Replace your mouse with a Wacom tablet, and do not leave the mouse thingie on the tablet. (usually this activates a 'sensor' led on the tablet which is otherwise off.)
Printers: see monitors or base units. My own experience is that the Samsung ML-1750 turns all leds off when in sleep mode, which it automatically goes into about ten minutes after it is done printing. Ink jets have such a short expected lifetime these days, I am not opposed to covering the leds with something you can easily peel away to see what is happening when needed.
If you are handy with tools, you might be able to make a roll top 'top' for your desk that would hide all of this for you on demand, and if you used light enough materials it would not cause signal degredation for things like wifi equipment.
As a last option, if you have a closet, or can make a large enough storage cabinet for your dorm, get a 'long' kvm extension and only have the mouse, keyboard and monitor sitting on the desk, everything else tucked away. Just make sure that the closet does not get too hot, and do not throw dirty clothes and stuff on top of your electronics. So it isn't the best gaming option? So what. you are looking for a peaceful way to get some sleep.
-Rusty
You never know...
It's DUCT tape, not DUCK tape. Get it f***ing right! It's good for DUCTS, not DUCKS, you sniveling... you... um, you...
Arg, I can't even finish this. That's how annoyed this makes me!
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
I see a lot of suggestions to use tape: electrical, duct, gaffer's, etc.
I don't know what's the matter with you kids these days.
When I was in college and being kept awake by the glow of all those vacuum tubes, I'd attack them relentlessly with a big can of black enamel spray paint. Sure, made it harder to identify which tube blew when stuff shut down. But you can generally tell by the temperature, if you hold the tip of your finger to the side of the tube. And a good spray of enamel keeps the light way down. Remember to turn the machine off before spraying, though, because most spray paints use a flammable propellant, and those tubes can get hot under heavy use.
The tube machine, needless to say, was a huge improvement over the machine I had in my room the previous year. I set up a web server on my Burroughs Mark II. That machine didn't have any lights of any sort, but the fuckin' racket the relays would make! Especially when someone tried to download some ASCII porn, and it used ever one of the memory cells in the 4kb array. If you haven't heard 4096 relays clattering at once, you don't know what noise is!
(and if you actually believe any of this, you kids are worse off today than even a old curmudgeon like me can imagine)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
... if this guy does not want to do the obvious: turn the damned stuff off.
Sometimes you may want to do something stupid, that does not mean other people should aid you in your pursuit of stupidity.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Mac mods on /. have just declared a fatwa against you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa
We didn't have time for sleep! Get back into that deathmatch private and let me hear your war cry! AAAARRGGHH!!!
--
Well it is...
/. posting a question that a 10 year old could answer, even a 5 year old might suggest the tape as a idea.
Cover lights in tape
or
open device, disconnect lights
Why is
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Here are your options, in a nutshell:
That's it, unless you can find a way to install some form of ultra-massive gravity in your dorm room that causes all light to bend towards it (and away from your eyes), although on second thought this would probably destroy all your stuff in the process.
Yaz.
And you know he's racing the clock!
He looks at the LED timer counting down!
EL EEEE DEEE's!
Rush to the pile of refuse that is always there!
Rumage thru it!
Find prizes of sheet of 100 mil opaic plastic, 2 pieces of conduit and / or rigid plumbing pipe, one of which will slide freely within the other, also one end cap that perfectly fits the larger pipe!
Rush to work bench that is always there!
Find hammer, diagonal cutters and a square heavy piece of steel that will function as an anvil!
Rush to wall where compressed gas that are always there!
Its either acetylene, oxygen or nitrous, doesn't really matter which!
Gather all materials in center of room!
Rip button off shirt!
Use hammer and square piece of steel to grind button into powder!
Put endcap on larger diameter pipe!
Put smaller diamete pipe inside larger diameter pipe!
Scrape ground up button into pipes!
Look around and realize there's something missing!
Rush to pile of refuse again and rummage for a rag!
Spread sheet of plastic on ground!
Fill pipe inside of pipe with gas from cylinders!
Look at EL EEE DEEE timer!
Time's almost up!
Reach in pants pocket and take out Swiss Army Knife! (the model with the cross)
Set Swiss Army Knife on sheet of plastic!
Look at EL EEE DEEE timer!
Time's all but gone!
Reach in other pant's pocket!
Take out wad of duct tape!
Look at EL EEE DEEE timer!
We're into single digits!
Rip off piece of duct tape!
Rush to EL EEE DEEE timer!
Cover EL EEE DEEE's with duct tape!
Problem Solved!
/cue MacGyver music
Set a very fat hamster next to each device, positioning the very fat hamsters between you and the devices.
Very fat hamsters work cheap.
Very fat hamsters are glad to get the work.
There are 2 potential problems when working with very fat hamsters.
1) You have to keep very fat hamsters seperated or they will form a very fat hamster union.
2) Very fat hamster crap.
Oh, one other thing.
You have to position your very fat hamsters close to the light source.
If you position your very fat hamsters too far from the light source they will cast very fat hamster shadows on your dorm room wall.
This has the potential of scaring the crap out of your college boy self.
*This message brought to you by the Very Fat Hamsters of America Foundation*
*Where our motto is "We don't move"
"At All"*
In college, I had the bottom bunk, so I just hung blankets from the bunk and had a place to sleep that was darker than you could imagine. My roommate could still have the lights on and it didn't affect me.
You probably meant "duct" tape. Unless of course you were referring to that special tape huntsmen use to secure their birds to the wall for display...
Or I meant duck tape which is a perfectly valid, if somewhat COMPLETELY CORRECT, way to reffer to what the heathens call duct tape.
Low tech solutions like electrical tape are fine, but the original poster is looking for something a bit more sophisticated. Originally appearing in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, and reprinted here, the DarkBulb may be just the ticket.
Yeah, 'cause once you've got the goo from the tape on your expensive electronics you're certainly gonna wanna douse it all in lighter fluid.
I suggest leaving it plugged in and turned on while you're applying the lighter fluid. Send us pictures. =)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Um, spray WD-40 on a rag and wipe with the rag, don't spray it directly on your toys (I didn't think I'd have to mention that, but then I remembered the original question).
Wikipedia disagrees.
Oh, and solving the "black tape electrical goo" problem mentioned in the parent post isn't that hard, it dissolves pretty well in lighter fluid.
The best product for dissolving glues or other adhesives without damaging plastics is this stuff called Bestine, which I believe is actually hexane. It's sold in art supply shops as a thinner for rubber cement.
Gotta be careful with it as it's highly flammable, but there's nothing else like it. Wipes away stuff that would otherwise be a major pain in the ass to remove like it's not even there.