I got a HDD dock from startech.com. It works great and does everything I need. The problem is it has the brightest goddamn blue LED I have ever seen. It is so unnecessarily bright. My eyes hurt looking in the same direction as it. What the fuck should I do? Return it? De solder the stupid ass LED? It works great aside from this one issue.
Edit: I opened the thing and drew with sharpie on the LED. It’s bearable to look at now.
Tape
The problem with that is the LED also functions as the power button.
i had a monitor like that once. big bright af blue power light baked into the power button, bottom center of the bezel. blue led was the ‘new’ thing back then. the barton-era matching pc (which i didn’t have) had a larger matching button on its front. if you know your '00s pavilions, you know the ones.
it was horrible. that monitor lived its entire life with a black piece of paper taped over the whole switch and light. i was not saddened when it finally gave up and failed to turn on. i was more annoyed that it took 15 years for it to fail.
Yes but also I’ve just put electrical tape over many an item.
The RGB craze is the worst.
Yeah it sucks that I sleep in the same room as my computer. It’s damn near impossible to find a case without RGB.
Last pc i built i had 1 hard request, “I don’t want a damn xmas tree in my pc.” girl laughed and the only light is from the heat sync :(
This is where black electric tape can be your best friend.
I bought a keyboard from ThinkGeek that had an LED that would hit me right in the eye. A little piece of tape and that keyboard served me well for years.
Blue LEDs are the worst offenders. No need to return it as long as you keep a bit of black tape ready. If you still need it as an indicator, you can use layers of yellowish tape. The one used while painting your walls works great. Masking tape it’s called in English.
Likely not, it seems wasteful if the product is otherwise good in all other important regards. I’d just cover up the LED with tape or paint.
I suggest getting something like LightDims: https://www.lightdims.com/index.php
You could dab it with a little paint or glue or something.
I usually use a little tiny piece of electrical tape, which should work unless the power button is absolutely minuscule. Desoldering it also works, but is more permanent.
You can get LED film off Amazon for like, $7. It blocks those annoying LEDs on tech devices, monitors, wall outlets, kitchen appliances, and my nemesis, smoke detectors with stupidly bright LEDs.
Best $7 you’ll spend this year.
I’ve not returned an item over it, but I’ve often wondered if there was a market for a company which de-LEDs items.
lol, I know this pain. about 20 yrs ago i bought a shiny new pc case and expected the red leds, it had 2 super bright blue leds that were either solid on(power) or flashing(drive activity), this pc was next to my bed pointing across my bed. the entire room was lit by these and hard blue circles were projected on the wall. ended up taping a cardboard strip over them.
I either tape the things with Isolation in dark to see nothing or the Painters-Tape which is yellow and partly lets light through.
But colored isolation band lets the light through a bit too.
No, but I did case mod a computer for this once. My Fractal Node 202 my last computer is in has a very bright white power button LED, too damn bright. Fortunately in this case it’s a standard 5mm through hole LED standing up off the board on its leads a bit, bent to point out the front. So I bent it to point upward. Dimmed it down significantly.
Returning it seems extreme to me… But I’m happy modding things like that.
Stick a piece of paper or card over the button/LED such that you can still depress it… Iterate/repeat until you’re satisfied.
My monitor had a bright blue power LED smack in the middle of the lower bezel. I took it apart on day one and brutally ripped out the LED, only then did I ever connect it to my computer.
