How Do I Disable My Gadgets' LEDs? 259
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?"
Cut or hide? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:black duct tape (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Black Electric Tape (Score:3, Interesting)
A. Not aesthetically pleasing.
B. Black electrical tape is known to come off of smooth objects with little effort if the object is exposed to a reasonable amount of heat. Eighty+ degrees Fahrenheit if I were to guess. Hopefully you don't keep a computer in that hot of an environment, though! (unless you get lucky you college nerd; queue drum line.)
C. This kinda goes with A. When you take black electrical tape off of something when it's been there for say 2 or 3+ months expect this black tape electrical goo to be stuck around where the tape lay. Easy to get off of one of these devices? Probably, but that would depend mostly on the device.
The reason I know all of this is because a past roomate of mine had his stereo ripped out of his car outside our apartment.
I put black electrical tape over the LED on the webcam I put in our window.. hoping they would strike again. They never did, filthy crooks
Got to love the responses... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Black Electric Tape (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Black Electric Tape (Score:3, Interesting)
B)Electrical tape is designed for heat very well. It's probelm is that it does like to stretch.
c) Lighter fluid, or another other cleaning solution(including fresh tape)
My router and cable modem lights boher me. they both have tape on them I haven't had any of the probelm you say. (A) is easy since everyything is black anyway (b) I use good electrical tape, not the $.50 roll stuff but the $3.00 a roll stuff (C) Electrical tapes greatest secert is that it loves to stick to itself.
You can coat something in oil so slick you can't hang on to it very well, put one rap of electrical tape around it. and then stick the electrical tape to itself and pull tight. And it will hold.