‘NIGHTTIME BLUES’ [OC]

There was a time when blue LEDs were the white whale of electronics, always out of reach and everyone wanted to figure out how to make them work. When someone finally did it, it was considered a massive breakthrough, and rightly so. Now they have somehow become the default cheapo LED, moreso than red or green. Could it be an industry-wide 'fuck you' to physics? "You tried to keep us from making blue LEDs, hah! Now look at us!!!"

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At one point, blue LEDs were super expensive because of their difficult production.
So any product that has a blue LED was considered premium. I guess they were also considered futuristic and high-tech.
Somehow, this is still in the mind of some manufacturers.
All I want is a barely-visible-in-soft-daylight diffused/frosted red or amber LED.
But no, it's always some 5w lensed blue LED at somehow produces a tighter beam of horrendous blue light that's brighter than most flashlights.

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- Reminds me on a German proverb "to add your mustard to it", which apparently came from a time at which mustard was rare and exquisite. So they added it to any kind of food just to "up it's prestige".
  
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Veritasium did a bit Why it was almost impossible to Make the Blue LED

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Yeah, the history of the blue LED is actually really interesting. It basically exists because one Japanese dude refused to take no for an answer, and continued working on developing them even after his company stopped funding his LED project.

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And when blue LEDs just started being available prop designers for scifi loved them because LEDs work much better on screen than incandescent bulbs, and as blue lights were something people didn't have yet in their household objects they looked new and interesting. Look at the Doctor Who and Torchwood props from the mid 2000s, everything from the iconic Sonic Screwdriver to alien zappers and bleepers and greebles of all kinds were full of tiny blue lights because it screamed "scifi" to the viewer.

Very quickly, though, blue LEDs got cheap enough for everyday junk and manufacturers immediately shoved them into every consumer product because they were new and interesting and, thanks in part to the scifi trend, made stuff look like scifi future tech you could have in real life.

Now, a couple decades on, we're still kind of stuck there.

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You even see them in Christmas lights. They're so retina piercingly stark, like not a chill light at all (though obv on the "cool" end of the spectrum). I'm out here walking my dog looking at the nice twinkly warm lights - no one wants to see your damned pinprick holes into the Tron dimension

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- I think we found Alec's Lemmy account
  
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They're the "literally" of LEDs? Wrong in almost every context but people can't stop using them?

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I often put a piece of duct tape on power indicator LEDs, some of them are incredibly bright to the point that it's hard to read the display. The LED is generally still visible under the tape ...

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I have a fan with a special silent mode to be used at nighttime. Guess what: The LED indicating silent mode is on is bright enough to read by its light.

If I meet the person responsible for that decision I will put them to sleep.

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- I bet the person responsible for that is the type to use a night light.
  
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Same here. I put two rings of jet-black electrical tape over the speakers I bought online because someone thought it was a great idea to blind me whenever I use the computer. There's no way to turn them off when they're plugged in. WHY??

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- At that point, you open the case and snip the leads going to the LEDs :D
  
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Try gaffer tape instead. It blocks all the light. It doesn't reflect much light at all. It generally sticks to anything. You can get it in a variety of colors. It doesn't leave as much sticky residue when removed or repositioned. I've not encountered many surfaces (expect painted surfaces) that it actually damages when carefully removed. I use black gaffer tape on basically all my electronic stuff: one strip to cover the whole light, two strips a razor's edge width apart so that I can still see the indicator if I try but otherwise 99.9% of the light is blocked, or a strip with a folded over tab at one end for the displays I want to block %100 of the light %90 of the time.

Duct tape, duck tape, electrical tape, masking tape all really suck unless you love that sticky gunky residue they inevitably leave on everything. Gaffer tape isn't perfect, but it's much better for this kind of semi-temporary light blocking without too much surface damage kind of job.

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- TBH I have no idea which one of these the stuff I use qualifies as. It's called "Panzertape" where I live, and the residue when you remove it doesn't really seem to be in line with what you describe from duct tape (i.e. it's very little).
  
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This feels like one of those small innovations that will become a marker of quality once somebody thinks about them for a while. Someone will figure out how to make the perfect indicator visible in a dark-ish environment without emitting much light otherwise, or some other way to confirm something is charging and it'll become the way you can tell which electronics are expensive. I, for one, can't wait. My fiber box is wrapped in so much tape you could drop it from a tall building and it'd be just fine.

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- I wonder if just like a super small piece of like color e-ink display might work right.
  
  Off it's just white but on it becomes a red square. Doesn't have to emit light but could add a gentle backlight but you can see it from pretty much any angle and it would be immediately identifiable.
  
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Electrical tape gang here checking in. Less residue than duct tape -- for the stupid bright LEDs you can still see them through the black tape even.

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Time to get roasted again but I dislike LEDs and I always tape black electrical tape on them.

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I have an air purifier that is stupid bright, I tried painters tape but ended up using the aluminum foil tape to block the lights

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- I like my air purifier because there is a button on it specifically for dimming AND turning off the damn lights.
  
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- Two fer one. You also blocked its cloud features!
  
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- I mean it makes sense because it needs to be bright in daylight.
  
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This, but I use washi tape because it is less gunky.

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My TV has a red LED that will blind you when the TV IS TURNED OFF

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But how would you ever know the TV was turned off if it didn't have a light to tell you?

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- I laughed at your reply, upvoted, and started to scroll when I remembered my TV has a “screen off” feature. I use it at bedtime to listen to futurama without the light making my sleep bad.
  
  At some point the show stops playing and goes to a menu. You actually wouldn't know the TV is on if it wasn’t for the light. 😑
  
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- To be fair to the tv, it's not letting you know it's off, it's letting you know it's still on but in sleep mode. TV's are just giant tablets now. If it was off, you'd have to wait for it to boot into its operating system the next time you wanted to watch TV.
  
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It's how you know that it's waiting for your remote controller signals, right? Otherwise how would you know that the TV is waiting. Always waiting. So lonely. Please send it signals!

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At least with my LG TV you can switch that off. It's in general settings "Standby light" :)

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Electrical tape is cheap

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It also falls off too easily. My favorite for this use case is black Gorilla tape. Like duct tape but thicker.

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- Real Gs open the device and desolder the LED.
  
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I've been raging lately about the fact that when you put most devices into sleep mode, they begin blinking incessantly. So much for me actually getting any sleep.

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The comments show it's not the color, but the intensity. Any color too bright is going to be annoying. I've got some monitors that have the perfect level for their power and controls, it's just enough to be able to see in daylight, and not at all in the face in the dark. There's no reason to have HID lights on electronic indicators (or on automobiles, but that's a different topic).

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It’s the very colour we’re not supposed to see at night though, if we want to sleep.

Sleep studies have found that even the standby light on a TV impacts sleep negatively.

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Blue is percieved as brighter by the human eye at the same luminosity of other colors.

Also eyelids don't block as much of it, so can still perceive blue lights with your eyes closed.

Also blue LEDs tend to be more efficient and higher luminosity...

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Some electronic devices let you dim the status LEDs in the settings, e.g. for Fritz!Box routers.

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I have black electrical tape over most led indicators. It's stupid because now I can't tell the battery charge on a lot of devices, but I hate the involuntary nightlights everywhere.

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I use white electrical tape. It drastically reduces the light brightness but allows enough though to know the light is on.

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You can get tape that's not clear nor is it completely opaque.

You can find dark colored "clear" style tape.

Alternatively, take a sharpie to some Scotch tape. Color to preference.

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The slimline AV receiver I bought for the bedroom has a fucking blue LED standby light. I had to put a piece of electrical tape over it.

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Blue is meant to be calming and nice. The brightness probably needs lowered on these chargers.

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Blue light makes you awake. They should use red.

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- Oh yeah, let's just make the room comfortable for fucking demons and shit.
  
  This is why you should THINK before typing.
  
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Is it because blue is the newest of the LED colours and so as the last to be made is still considered "new" and "fancy" by manufacturers?

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"Modern"

I remember when everything used red LEDs, especially alarm clocks. It was nice.

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Bluetac - no light gets through and it's usually pretty easy to remove when necessary.

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Dry erase. Just dab it to adjust darkness levels.

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Read "fornicates" like a Greek hero

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You’re the first to even mention it. ☺️

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These are what I use to dim them without blocking them entirely: https://lightdims.com/

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I had a mine pickup that had a blue LED for the indicator that the buggy whip was on. That thing was a fucking laser at night, shining right into my eyeball. I eventually got fed up and made a duct tape flap to put right above it so I could still tell it was on (my feet would be blue) but my retinas would still be intact

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Yeah, it's way worse in vehicles haha. I have an aftermarket entertainment system in my 2006 Matrix -- it has three modes: Daytime colours (bright), nighttime colours (dark blue but still bright), and screen off. Highway driving at night means the only real option is screen off. I otherwise really like the system, but it seems like a huge oversight. It seems that none of the developers of these things ever actually test them in nighttime driving/working conditions.

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- I don't miss much about the 2013 Prius but it had what was basically a blackout mode, akin to the old Saabs, where almost everything inside the car that was illuminated would turn off.
  
  Great for cruise control on the highway at night.
  
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I'm sorry, but what on earth is a "buggy whip"

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- A tall flag that attaches to your pickup. It has a light on the end.
  
  It prevents this from happening:
  
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White painters tape on top of LEDs generally makes the light a bit smoother and, importantly, less bright.

I have done this to devices with poorly dispersed LEDs.

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Green is too close to yellow in some LED colors, so if you have a yellow indication for an issue with the devices it’s far easier to separate blue-yellow-red indications than green-yellow-red, especially for those who make have deficient color vision.

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Technology Connections rants about blue LEDs (13:33)

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to be fair, on my WiFi router, a recent (cheap) TV my mother bought and my Xbox the LEDs are able to be disabled in software, so some manufacturers are catching on.

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I once slept in a hotel room where the TV had a blue LED standby light. I had to go and cover it up, it was way too bright.

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You guys in these comments should all buy light dimming stickers

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We shouldn't have to. Products should be made sensibly and of quality. They'll skimp and save fractions of a penny on every single facet of a product's design, so what possesses them to waste all this money on blinding lights that nobody asked for?

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I have a microphone that when plugged into my computer, even if the computer is sleeping, shines a bright blue light that cannot be covered up without removing the sticker covering the screws holding the mesh in, so I just put a pair of socks on top of it as a 'temporary' solution

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drop of black nail polish?

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Black electrical tape works really well to temporarily cover LEDs.

Edit: I feel unoriginal... The very next comment I read also suggested black electrical tape. That's why I should just lurk like always :/

Edit2: it feels like every other comment suggests electrical tape. At least I am not the only unoriginal lemming.

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- I should specify - I would need to cover the whole microphone to block the LED as the LED is inside (picture)
  
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Judging by all the comments, I’m definitely not the only one with this pet peeve. 😅

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I don't charge things at night since I don't like to be asleep when a battery is charging. This conveniently makes it so I don't get to see a charging light at night. Everything else is on a power strip with a switch. My bedside light and alarm clock are the only things plugged a power strip without a switch.

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I have my computer full of led’s and my monitors right next to my bed do you really all need perfect darkness to sleep?

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Every study ever done shows the mental and physical health benefits of dark for sleeping. Worth looking into.

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