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Comment by jfnixon | Hacker News Reader

Find the speaker/chirper/noisemaker and disable it, using wirecutters if necessary. Black tape works great on LEDs.

I have a roll of black stickers that get stuck on everything. Latest offender though is a power board that has an LED near the USB ports. I've covered where it's supposed to shine through, but its bright enough that it shines through the USB ports as well. Even if something is plugged in to them!

Is it generally safe to assume that cutting a noisemaker (or LED?) off wont break the rest of the product?

I find that on products that are mostly digital removing LEDs and speakers shouldn't cause an issue. However, some analog electronics may be designed with the LED as a current path. If this is the case perhaps you can replace it with a non light-emitting diode with similar Vf

You should always be able to replace them with an appropriate resistor.

If you can open it enough to cut the led, why not just wrap the led in tape while you've got it open? That should cut down on the light leakage through the usb ports.

Put a small square of tin foil to cover the LED, and tape over it. It's non-invasive and I haven't found any LED that shine through tin foils.

Black tape also works to muffle buzzers, just cover the holes with tape and it gets much quieter.

Not always possible.

I own a couple of devices I would like to do that to, but I can't access the electronics without cutting the entire plastic casing.

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