[javier_e06]

My backyard neighbor installed a backup generator with a very annoying green led that shines right through my kitchen window. I hate HOA's and I don't live in one but I really lost sleep about this. One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case. Still shines on but the annoying glow shines elsewhere. Inspection passed.

[AnotherGoodName]

There was a time in the electronics world when bright, house illuminating leds first came about and manufacturers used them in place of the dull red/green indicators. Black tape everywhere. Macbooks were one of the worst offenders. They had an extremely bright and worst of all pulsating led that was on when the device was in standby. Used to shine right through laptop bags and keep everyone nearby awake.

Fortunately that fad is somewhat over and manufacturers mostly learnt not to put in the brightest led they could source.

[paxys]

The situation still hasn't improved all that much. Just looking around I have electrical tape over the LEDs of my modem, router, computer monitor, soundbar, humidifier, fan, entryway intercom, thermostat. And these are all new devices.

[thewebguyd]

The one that got on my nerves recently is a little bedside 3-in-1 wireless charger.

Has one of the brightest LEDs I've seen lately right on front of the charger whenever a device is on it. Why would they put a bright light on a night-stand accessory, and put it in the front where its shining right into your eyes as you try to sleep?

Or better yet, why have an LED on it at all in the first place? Any device I'm putting on it has its own charging indicator, I don't need the charger itself to have one.

[switchbak]

I’ve clipped the RGB lights from multiple computer fans I’ve bought. Gawdy and unnecessary, and sometimes you can’t find items without them.

Don’t get me started on kids toys that are too loud!

[mikepurvis]

Many toys can be physically dampened, but another way is throwing a resistor in parallel across the speaker. I did this with a Little People princess castle my daughter had when she was very young and it was quite a nice way to do it— same bright and unmuffled music when you put the dolls on the stand, but at about 20% the volume.

[klondike_klive]

>Don’t get me started on kids toys that are too loud!

V-tech have a lot to answer for. As do all well-meaning relatives who buy them as presents. Straight under the stairs they go.

[dotancohen]

I much prefer two or three coats of black nail polish. It looks much nicer than tape, is more durable, and the light can barely be seen - just enough to see it when you want to. Like it should have been from the factory.

[conradev]

I bought a sticker pack that does this. Still being able to see the light is pretty useful

[amelius]

Plasti-dip also works.

[CharlesW]

Does that dim the light or completely occlude it? (Both options would be handy in different situations.)

[doubled112]

I use stickers designed for dimming LEDs. They’re almost like a thick window tint cut into various shapes. Dim enough to stop the LED from being annoying but you can still see its status.

A little more expensive, but they look a little nicer too.

[powvans]

You can buy a sheet of LED blocking stickers on Amazon for a few bucks. I keep some in my suitcase and leave every hotel room a little better than I found it.

[layer8]

https://www.lightdims.com/

[chiph]

When I needed to dim the backlight on a new bedside clock, I asked a local window tint company for a couple of pieces of offcut film. I'm glad someone had the idea to turn that into a business.

[doubled112]

I think those are the ones. I’ve been working on the pack of them for years.

[EbNar]

Very interesting and worldwide shipping for pennies! Thanks!

[Analemma_]

IME consumer electronics have gotten a lot better about this, but appliances and other things outside the tech sphere are still awful. My portable AC unit has a bright-as-hell seven-segment display for the temperature which shows "--" even when it's turned off!

[formerly_proven]

This might just be amateur EEs doing their thing in an organization that doesn't constrain these aspects of the product. Data sheet says If(cont)=20 mA? Okay, 20 mA it is.

[Scoundreller]

At least it’s pretty easy these days to increase the résistance of an SMT resistor (if you can find it).

(Just scrape it down a bit)

[ffsm8]

Most of my devices have had ways to turn them off.

Router has a button which disable all lights until it's pressed again, monitors have the setting in their menus.

The only device thats shining brightly in my home is a storage controller I've got in my home server, with no way of turning it off - or at least dimming it down

[fkyoureadthedoc]

yeah my routers' LEDs are obnoxiously bright, luckily they have an option in the app to turn it off on a schedule. The super bright green LED in my smoke detector unfortunately does not have this option. Nor do the blue LEDs in my smart outlets...

[b112]

The smoke detector is mandated by legislation in a lot of places. The premise being it can break, you don't know, and thus die.

Not a fan of LEDs, but I at least understand why this as it is.

[withinboredom]

I had the tenant before me install fake fire detectors once. Always a green flash every few seconds but that was the only electronics in there. I only noticed because after a few years, I never had to change the batteries, so I decided to check them.

When you move into a new place, always check they are real and work.

[chiph]

Also, shake the ABC fire extinguishers. The powder can clump in the bottom of the cylinder. Or replace them if they're 15+ years old - the local fire station will take them to use in their training classes.

[aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA]

New anxiety source: not that I will move into such a situation as yours, but that I do so and not remember to check.

[johndubchak]

Two words: LED clocks.

[giantg2]

I think I've used more electrical tape covering LEDs than I have for any other purpose.

[dkenyser]

My brand new Netgear router I just bought is so bright it's actually blinding if I catch a glimpse late at night so we might not be out of the woods just yet.

[cdjk]

The pulsing macbook leds were horrible. I was in college then, living in dorms or other shared housing where my laptop was always in my bedroom overnight. I got in the habit of putting a dark shirt over it.

[zerocrates]

I still have electrical tape right now over the power LED on my computer case: it's a pretty bright white LED that pulses in sleep and as far as I know my motherboard won't let me turn that behavior off. I guess I could have just pulled the leads to the LED instead.

Now that I think about it, that was probably actually one motherboard ago and it might be different now... but the tape's working just fine so who needs to check?

[sedatk]

My 2024 Lenovo Thinkpad inexplicably has that red light. Constantly fading in and out too. It could be my only reason not to buy a Thinkpad again.

[arp242]

Can't vouch for every model, but on all the ThinkPads I've owned every single LED can be disabled, including on the X13 I got last year.[1] This is actually one reason I buy ThinkPads. Other models I've had were T61, X270, E585, X280. I've heard the Carbon models are quite different from the T/X ones, so maybe you can't disable on those? That would be disappointing.

If you're on Linux the dot on the cover is /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::lid_logo_dot. See the other files in that directory for other LEDs.

I don't know about Windows off-hand because I don't use it, but the BIOS exposes the functionality so there should be a program to do it. In a quick search: https://github.com/valinet/ThinkPadLEDControl

FreeBSD doesn't support it, but quite easy to write a patch for it if you want it (I actually wrote a patch for this, but didn't really put the finishing touches on it and submit it as my previous one got no feedback at all, so *shrug* – I ended up just installing Linux again). Same for the other BSDs.

[1]: You need to compile your own kernel for the charging/power LED which wasn't needed on older models, because that's registered as "unknown LED" and protected behind a compile option. It's a tad annoying, but it's possible.

[sedatk]

Oh that's perfect, thanks! Let me give it a shot.

[thr0w]

Was just about to post this - thought I was neurotic for taping over LED displays in the 2000s. My sight and hearing get annoyingly sensitive when I'm in bed at night.

[kraussvonespy]

Although there are a number of charging stations designed for IOS devices that have bright blue LEDs that you can't turn off. Some good number of these devices are going on someone's nightstand where a bright blue LED is exactly what most buyers don't want.

[brookst]

When blue LEDs first became available they screamed “premium” and “high tech” and it seemed like a race to put the brightest, most-blue LED possible in every device. That was hell.

[HPsquared]

Remembering the blue power LED on my old 2007 Dell laptop, that thing would light up the whole room and yes, it did flash ("softly", at least) in sleep mode.

[amelius]

My electric toothbrush has a pulsaring led like that when charging. Which is especially annoying (in hotels etc.) because charging happens overnight.

[tomaskafka]

That’s because the router and printer makers have bought all the superbright LEDs on the market.

[BLKNSLVR]

That time is now

[neilv]

> small green sticker

Two additional ways to calm an indicator LED are with the modern self-laminating labelmaker tape:

* White tape -- Put 1 or more layers over the LED, to dim and diffuse.

* Black tape -- Use a pin to poke a hole through the tape, from behind, before putting it over the LED. (If there's 3+ LEDs, like on a network switch or server front panel, it will look neater if you measure the pitch of the centers of the LEDs, then use a ruler over the back of the labelmaker tape to match that with the holes. If the back of the tape has two strips you peel off to expose the adhesive, you can use that as a guide for keeping each hole level.)

You could also put black tape over white, but I haven't had to do that so far.

[JumpCrisscross]

> One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case

Did you try talking to them about it first?

[actionfromafar]

Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble

Idk, I’d consider it highly provocative if a neighbour installed anything on or tampered with my property without not only my permission but even the decency of notification. At that point, they not only lose the benefit of doubt but the benefit of civility since I’m not sure what other social conventions and laws they may be comfortable casually violating.

[TeMPOraL]

OTOH, if you talk about it first, then you forfeit the option to do the sticker thing later, because then the neighbor will know it was you who tampered with device. If you do it like OP did, then the neighbor will not be sure who was responsible, if anyone at all - they might assume they're just imagining things, or not even notice at all, because they're not paying attention. Asking first is a guaranteed way to make them pay attention.

Not advocating any course of action, just gaming out the options a little.

[martin-t]

Exactly. People usually know their neighbors enough to know whether they'll get a reasonable response or not.

If the neighbor had antisocial personality traits (narcissism is most common), trying to talk to them would only trigger a conflict which cannot be resolved.

[brookst]

Yeah at that point you are almost obligated to confront the person who was trying to avoid conflict. Like, dude, just say something. Assuming the worst is a very bad habit and very antisocial.

[martin-t]

People know their neighbors. Consider that the neighbor might have been known to be anti-social instead (e.g. had one of the subtypes of narcissism) and resolving the issue directly was more likely to lead to a satisfactory outcome for both sides than confronting them because they were likely to escalate / not let go.

Assuming the worst at first is a bad habit but assuming bad intent after a bad track record is established is healthy and helpful.

[b112]

It should be noted that trespassing near a residence at night, is often different than during the day. Where I live, at night it's criminal.

[brookst]

Where I live it’s criminal day or night, but certainly the likely reactions differ.

[atakan_gurkan]

Umm, but didn't you already "casually violate a social convention" and perhaps a law or local ordinance when your green led shined through your neighbour's kitchen window? Then perhaps you should not complain, since you forfeited the benefit of civility by your own terms.

[actionfromafar]

Yes, I'm not advising, just an idle thought.

[godelski]

Sure, but we don't know that. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common to avoid confrontation. A lot of people might consider it too much trouble because they don't know their neighbors. If you don't go in angry/"swinging" then people are usually pretty reasonably

[ottah]

This is more important, you have to give people a chance to rectify the situation.

[cwmoore]

Seems the authorities were here already.

[brikym]

What do you suggest I do about Ford pickup trucks with annoyingly high, bright high beams?

Maybe a light bar for the rear of the car and some reflective material for the sunvisor?

[brookst]

Flash brights at them, as you would do with anyone else. I drive a lifted 4x4 and through honest oversight failed to re-adjust headlights after the lift.

Just took a few people flashing brights at me to make me realize and do the (very easy) adjustment to proper specs.

Doesn’t solve people behind you, but it’s not like they’re going to pull over and adjust anyway. Flash brights and consider it a favor to the person in front of the offender.

[rollcat]

Telling people they're doing something annoying / dangerous / etc is surprisingly effective. Ask the person smoking next to you to move downwind. Ask the neighbor next door to turn down the TV. Ask the tourist in public transport to move their suitcase so it doesn't block the door. Works every time, most of the time.

[squigz]

Doing so politely is effective.

But yeah, it's kind of shocking how often people are like "I hate this thing that person is doing" and I'm like "Have you asked them to stop?" and they haven't. Just... ask? Worse case scenario they say no and you're in the same spot you were.

[strogonoff]

People prefer to avoid rejection because if you get denied, depending on stability of your self-esteem and feeling of security, you may enter a new reality where you are inconsequential, not loved/respected, and so on. It may end up being a vicious loop of self-fulfilling prophecies and self-hate.

Avoiding such negative consequences of rejection may require a confrontation and possibly very expensive dental treatment (or sponsoring one for the victim of your assault, which it may be interpreted as if you win even if you do not hit first) when it is between two men, and other concerns for personal safety if it is a woman against a man.

(Anecdotally, unfamiliar women seem to have less of an issue asking each other to change their behaviour this way, as do men asking women.)

So, it is more preferable to not complain and instead raise your social status such that you do not come in contact with those people (either real status or at least imagined one, through bottled-up contempt towards those rubes or whatever offending term the context calls for).

I’m not saying it is ideal, just describing why it seems pretty to me obvious how person A would often rather not “simply” ask person B to stop doing something or change something to accommodate person A.

[Xss3]

People hate(d) teslas for a while because software updates reset their headlight angle and made them blind everyone, and recalibrating was apparently a bastard at the time

[hammock]

What kind of car do you drive? It’s highly likely if your vehicle is low-slung that the pickup is not using high beams, just its regular lights, but the height difference means they shine straight in your eyes.

Similar to the effect when an oncoming car is cresting a small hill and the headlight angle of incidence changes to impact your eyes

[brikym]

It's a Nissan Leaf which is a little higher than most sedans because of the battery but still lower than an SUV. The problem is vehicle shapes become an arms race. I don't really want to drive an SUV. Vehicles keep getting more and more hostile to other drivers and pedestrians especially with the fist shaped front ends.

[reaperducer]

Maybe a light bar for the rear of the car and some reflective material for the sunvisor?

I once came up behind a semi on a rural stretch of I-80 with my brights on. He hit me with a set of rear-mounted flood lights.

Probably illegal, but who's going to stop him? Plus, I got the message.

[Bender]

If you mean rear extra bright red lights those are for fog to prevent being rear-ended. If there was no fog it is illegal. Whether or not it is enforced depends on location, agencies, priorities. Example usage would be in Bakersfield, CA there is a location that at times goes from clear to not being able to see lights 2 feet away nearly instantly. Beyond pea-soup fog. It's a very unnerving experience if one is not ready for it.

[reaperducer]

No. Not red lights. Flood lights. Like you'd have to light up your backyard.

[icameron]

Those are standard equipment on many big rigs for backing up in the dark. I had the same experience as you when I forgot to dim my brights coming up on a trucker on the interstate at night!

[yard2010]

Put tennis balls between your washer and the back windshield with a visible note "back off or feel my balls"

[pnw]

Night driving glasses. They don't reduce the lumens per se, but they reduce the blue light, leaving a yellow light which is not as headache inducing.

https://www.eagleeyes.com/collections/night-driving

[actionfromafar]

Green stickers

[scrps]

Not to hijack your post with a PSA but I think you'll endorse it...

If you are building a product and it has any indicator lights please dim/diffuse/lightpipe them.

It seems to be a trend these days of ultra bright LEDs for indicators, I have so many devices I've either disconnected, dimmed or taped over the LEDs because it is so bloody bright.

[godelski]

Extra helpful if you can add a photodiode to the system that can adjust brightness accordingly. It costs effectively nothing in parts and should take any competent engineer less than 5 minutes to include it. Better, use multiple because redundancy is better! I wish my car had redundancy so it's entertainment panel could go back to adjusting from being visible during the day to not being blinding at night (it has brightness adjustments but that's insufficient for a car and living anywhere outside a major city)

For people doing software, press for the love of god just make that shit adjustable. Only fucking noobs hard code variables. Practicing good habits will help everyone, including you. Unless you got a serious reason not to, expose that to the users. Even if you don't think anyone will want it, I promise you, someone does. There's a lot of people and everyone thinks differently. So only lock down what needs to be locked down.

Unless you're trying to create e-waste or piss people off. Which in that case I only have two words for you and they aren't nice

[paradox460]

You don't even need to do that. You can measure ambient light with the LED, using it as a photodiode

[godelski]

The sane one that's on? Is that light constant or blinking?

[paradox460]

You'd measure when the LED is off, but you could do this many times a second

[godelski]

Well you can't measure they brightness of the LED that is emitting. You can ambient light but not sure that's what matters in this application.

Also don't forget about response time. You may not be able to do it that fast. Depends on the led

[fecal_henge]

To reply to this and the above comment:

Cheapest light pipe on digikey: 16 cents Cheapest photodiode on digikey: 11 cents Cheapest LED (obviously that annoying blue): 625 milli cents!

Part costs matter! Its not just the BOM, its the NRE from the increased complexity. Im not saying saying its OK, just that its inevitable considering the economic conditions.

I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be. Add to this that sometimes you never even see the thing you designed!

[godelski]

  > 16 cents Cheapest photodiode on digikey

On DigiKey the cheapest is $0.125[0]. On Alibaba I can find much cheaper, including less than penny [1,2]. Now pretend with me that you're building in lots. You're going to get cheaper than Alibaba, though maybe not by much.

  > I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be.

I think if it is annoying enough that at presumably >10m away it can keep the gp awake you don't really need to be that precise in your measurement. It's basically way too bright.

But if you want to get creative you could use the diodes in the circuit or even your led if you'll blink it. But that last one doesn't tell you the led brightness, only ambient.

[0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/harvatek-corporat...

[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1-4V-20-30-45-60_6253...

[2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/JST3-3MM-receiver-pho...

[fecal_henge]

The digikey costs are more (I quoted qty=1 prices though), its the ratio between the component types which is more interesting though.

I think annoying at 10m is sufficient power to require a 'power' LED, so that shouldnt be hard to avoid in a design I would agree. Annoying in your kitchen however is much harder to eyeball a value for (excuse the pun).

[godelski]

  > I quoted qty=1 prices though

Yet on the unit I linked it is $0.14 per. 2c difference, but hey, that's a full photodiode on Alibaba.

A big part of the assumption that I was making in my original comment is that you're mass producing devices, not treating it as a hobby project. I agree, the constraints are very different in these two settings. A major difference is the cost/ratio of parts to other costs/time. In mass production the price per part is going to approach <$0.01 for standard COTS parts. Same reason Alibaba has them for so cheap (which doesn't include shipping)

  > Annoying in your kitchen however is much harder to eyeball a value for (excuse the pun).

Yes, I agree with this. Though In that setting I think you may be able to dual use the LED. Periodically blink it to detect ambient light. You can be pretty rough with this frequency and your accuracy level. But the best solution is always adding some little POT so it can be adjusted. It adds a little cost and design time, but if you're actually selling products that's very likely going to be a inconsequential amount of time and inconsequential cost.

*BUT* it is something the bureaucrats will be able to look at and say that they need to remove it because at scale it will save "a lot of money." But does it? I'm unconvinced. To me it seems to just make the consumers more upset and annoyed. Sure, you might have saved the company $100k because you are producing 10M units, but I'm pretty confident most consumers would rather pay $0.10 to have that part. The bigger problem might be a Lemon Market type of problem where consumers don't actually know/realize they want such a feature at time of purchase but randomly and intermittently realize it over the next week or couple years. It never gets priority thought because there's usually other things to complain about and well then we need to have a larger conversation about if we're doing our jobs as engineers. Are we actually providing value to people with the products we make? Can we take pride in our work? You may be making something dumb, but can you honestly tell yourself "I made the best thing I could"?

The business people need pushback because they don't care about the product, they only care about the profits. That's part of your job as an engineer. Because your job as an engineer isn't to be concerned with the profits, it is to be concerned with the product. Your engineering managers are the bridge, not you the engineer. And a good engineering manager doesn't fully align with the business people either. Because when push comes to shove you have to decide between either: 1) sacrificing the product in favor or profit or 2) sacrificing profits in favor of the product. As an engineer, your job is to have the latter.

[Razengan]

This is actually one of the best things that Apple did with their devices (except a few like the MacBook MagSafe) that PC users with their 1000 lights on everything just don't get.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Hey now, don't blame us PC users. It's almost impossible to buy decent hardware that isn't RGB`d up the wazoo. Do I want all that crap lighting? No. Do I have a choice? No.

[brikym]

Please forward this to the billboard advertising industry.

[Razengan]

The entire advertising industry is cancer.

[bob1029]

So the LED on these generators is intended to signal issues with the machine to the property owner. The green sticker might be fine at first glance (i.e., when the machine is healthy), but when it switches to yellow (routine maintenance alert) or red (will not autostart due to fault), the owner might not notice.

[garbagewoman]

Yeah no kidding the lights are meant to indicate things

[bboygravity]

I can highly recommend aluminum tape or copper tape. Doesn't let any light through and super easy to apply.

[theodric]

If my neighbor had come to me saying my genset indicator light was annoying them I would have marched right out with side cutters and removed it. It's a pity that people can't just talk to each other rather than having to resort to vigilante stickering.

[IAmGraydon]

You ever think about not breaking the law by trespassing and just talking to your neighbor?

[jeffrallen]

What happened when you talked to him about it and offered him the sticker?

[nenenejej]

One night I just went a back there and...

Expects vandalism or more serious crime.

...put a small green sticker

Ok, good engineer!