Why does every small appliance or useful home electronics item have the BRIGHTEST LEDs in them?
I bought a new fan for our bedroom Sunday. It has 4 speed settings, and LEDs to display which setting you’re on.
Just like every other electrical device in our bedroom, I had to cover the LEDs with electrical tape because they are TOO DAMM BRIGHT. That one light was more than bright enough for me to see in the room with all the lights off.
I can’t sleep well if there’s a lot of light like that, especially blue light, and it’s like every fucking electronics manufacturer used the same extra bright blue LEDs.
All of our power strips have them. Same brightness.
The fans have them.
Don’t even get me started on digital clocks and the plague of bright LEDs that they bring about
Many charging plugs have them built into the plug itself.
Even some fucking light switches have them now!
I have about 6 different things in our bedroom that have electrical tape over their completely unnecessary LEDs.
Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?
Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?
The gradual spread of light pollution has gotten crazy, and people still don’t really notice it. We’re at the point that it’s actually driving insects to extinction. If you look somewhere rural vs. urban the difference in what constitutes “night” is mindblowing, and rural areas are getting brighter all the time themselves.
I’m honestly a bit surprised that we don’t have mandatory dimmers installed in all major buildings that turn off the lights after X hour or x number of hours without any movement.
That, and motion sensors and dimmers on street lights with shades on them to prevent light from being blasted into people’s homes and apartments.
This much light pollution can’t be healthy.
I really wish that street lights were required to be turned off after midnight on all but main roads. It would help with this.
So would banning fucking motion activated spotlights that activate after a certain time at night.
Or maybe, more surgically, we require that lights only illuminate the owner’s property.
Because they’re cheap and look “modern/futuristic” so shit manufacturers love them. I have also used electrical tape on power strips, chargers, smoke detectors, etc
That and your average electrical engineer will consider an LED useful that signals the device has power.
Most probably then don’t consider where the device is actually used. In a well-lit office space that LED doesn’t annoy anyone.
I was actually complaining about the exact same thing yesterday! I had to use a putty-like adhesive to cover a lot of those bright af LEDs. It’s indeed infuriating.
Agree. When my DVD player back in 2000 came with a bright blue power-on LED, that crap started to bother me. Sitting right under the TV, so watching anything in a darkened room means I had that fucker blinding me all the time. Nothing a little duct tape can’t fix, but that’s not exactly helping.
Ever since I’ve been actively avoiding devices where I can’t dim & disable the LEDs.
Car headlight are too fucking bright nowadays
Electrical tape can be used to black them out.
lmao
Might be some solace in the near future. Pixel Light is becoming a thing, where the car will selectively black out part of the headlight beam for oncoming traffic.
Agreed. I can’t tell when people are driving with their high beams on anymore.
Thank you! I’m not the only one!
My pet peeve is not just the brightness, but the blueness. These things are fucking blue raspberry slurpee blue. Paired with a very reddish orange turn signal they come up behind me and indicate and I think I’m getting pulled over for a sec.
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This is why I always have the high beans on when driving my 90’s car. I’ve got to fit in with the cool kids (oh and be able to see the road despite the blinding lights coming at me.)
Not sure if you are joking or not. But at times that’s actually what I think about and sometimes even do. If there is a car with too bright lights coming down the road I’ll turn on the high beams because it reduces my ability to see the road otherwise.
People driving around like they’re trying to spot kangaroos in the suburbs
Even the auto dimming ones are too much
Especially when they’re in one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks with headlights that are right at eye level for anyone in a normal car. Even being followed by a forty year old Mack semi isn’t nearly as bad, because they’ve at least got sealed beam headlights.
“… one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks …”
Why’d you say American Pickup Trucks twice?
I kid, but really those things are hideous. The front end looks like a Baleen whale feeding.
Depending where you are, the bright bulbs help spot deer. Though if you are in the suburbs that might not be really much of a problem
Seriously, I swear I get temporarily blinded at night sometimes.
They installed LEDs in the road lights near me and they had a faulty film cover that turned purple 😆 now they whole highway is light up purple at night!
I miss the days of red LEDs. I understand blue were new and novel at one point but that’s passed.
new AND novel?
also fresh and different!
Our fresh state of the art new innovation, neoBlue© coloured LEDs, using novaBright technology(patent pending) to brighten your days and lead to a fresh and exciting future filled with the latest stunning luxuries.
I’m old.enough to remember when this was literally a news item… For a long time LEDs where red orange and green but the wavelength for blue was tricky. Then in early 90s they finally cracked being able to make blue with cheap materials and manufacturing processes for mass consumption. It would change the world as having r g and b enabled LEDs to be used in displays. So blue LEDs were the ones that won a Nobel prize and was in all the journals and on pop sci TV shows like beyond 2000.
So some of the copy was identical to your post
(Read more here https://medium.com/predict/why-blue-led-earned-nobel-prize-if-reds-and-greens-already-existed-for-decades-d03e31a6fd8f )
It’s different to the eye! See how it’s something you might recognize, but you don’t?
I seem to be fortunate that both my last cable modem and my router have built-in options to turn off all LEDs, even the power LED, for aesthetics.
Don’t even get me started on VEHICLE HEADLIGHTS ! >:(
Police got these super bright LED lights here recently (Germany). When I drive on a countryside road at night and police is in the incoming traffic, I am blinded for at least 15 seconds. I have to stare at my hood and the right strip of the road directly in front of me in order to not just veer off.
I wonder whether I’m just oddly sensitive to light or if someone really fucked up. They are way too bright.
They are supposed to be aimed down, but some manufacturers don’t do this. On a 2021 subaru, you can practically paint a perfectly flat line on a wall at even a considerable distance. They are surgically flat and pointed down. Perfectly illumates people’s legs from far away, but not their upper bodies.
hashtag-not-an-engineer-but The vast majority of products you can just pull the LED. Don’t resolder, just pull it out. If it goes badly, you can either just put it back, or replace with a "non-LE-"diode of the same spec.
I have opened up devices to physically remove the led. SMD LEDs stand no chance against a steady hand and a precision flathead screwdriver.
precision flathead screwdriver
Ah yes. Just like my precision printer adjustment mallet.
Electrical tape to black it out.
Painters tape to dim it.
I use tiny balls of patafix/blutac to cover exactly the LED surface.
Didn’t think about the painters tape for just dimming the light, great idea.
You can actually buy tinted tape to dim them without completely blacking them out. So you can take your clock from “bright enough to keep your entire bedroom lit” to “just bright enough to read in the dark.”
Found out while watching Technology Connections. Bright blue monochromatic LEDs are one of his biggest pet peeves, and he mentioned the tinted tape off-hand in one of his videos.
Yep I have a pack of various shapes and sizes for dimming LEDs. You just stick it over the light. Works great
Bingo, there it is. Thanks!
I bought some pre-cut led dimming stickers on a sheet. Any new electronics that come into my house get one. As someone who likes to sleep in near complete darkness it’s a must have.
I literally travel with a roll of black electric tape for this exact reason.
No officer, I use it to cover the lights on electronics in my hotel room. Honest!
I mean, just carry a small roll of it, not one that’s like an inch or two wide…
Thanks for reminding me. Gotta pack that for my next holiday.
Use cut pieces of sticky notes. It’s the correct width and doesnt look as jank
…or one or more layers of nail polish.
The electrical tape approach is what I did and it did wonders. Went from having a myriad of green and blue LEDs on my fans/portable AC/etc to complete wonderful darkness when I retired for the night. Made a distinct difference in my ability to fall asleep faster at night. I hate having lights when going to bed. Darkness or bust.
Do this and never look back
With the tape over the LEDs you can look back though. You won’t be blinded. It’ll be OK.
May the LED’s I tape not light the way
I have a black pen that can write on plastic. I’ve used that to dim the insanely bright LED on a smoke detector. If you are careful (I wasn’t) then this method looks nicer than putting some tape on a device.
Fully agree. One of the worst offenders is the PS5 whose standby lights can’t even be covered with tape properly because they’re complex curves. Even the clocks on my stove and microwave are too bright. I happened to have some black “washi” tape (basically masking tape) and it did a nice job of dimming them without looking out of place.
There really should be an option to dim it low.
I am so happy with my new keyboard in every way apart from the fact that the num pad light etc. is blue and SO BRIGHT to the point where it is almost blinding to look at directly from above, and it lights up my ceiling blue at night, like pointing a torch. I guess it’s a sign of quality or whatever but I think it is a tad unnecessary to be that bright. I may end up covering it with a few layers of transparent/tinted tape.
I’m a bit late and maybe someone already mentioned it, but go onto amazon and order the cheapest darkest car window tinting film. I have it on all of my leds and it makes it a lot more bearable.
Blue LEDs can trigger migraines in us poor saps who are photosensitive, so them being all over the place has been a ton of fun, let me tell you.
I got reddish-brown tints for my glasses and it’s been a lifesaver.
Was going to say why blue also. Very bad for sleep quality red/orange would be better.
