We Ruined Status LEDs; Here’s Why That Needs to Change
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
But it had a bright blue LED, which was not only disturbing to me but could also be seen through the damned mask.
How on Earth anybody signed off on that design is beyond me.
It also screams loudly and for long times whenever I power it on and when I want to switch the ambient noise mode. At the point it can be heard by someone close, despite the closed design. Especially that the default is active noise cancelling, and it's broken most of the time, making a loud blow noise in one hear, and that the mode in the middle, that badly recreates the noise around, for which I have no use. Tough luck if the device establish a Bluetooth connection when it's speaking, it cancels the operation and the process needs to be done again. Please, please remember the last mode I used, this is the one I most probably want to use next time.
This device is gratuitously both noisy and very luminous. The latter can be somewhat fixed with some good electrical tape, the later requires a mobile app I can't install and it would disable any feedback, and reverts next time it needs to be reset. Despite its comfort and good sound, when it dies, I'll probably buy something else.
But I have to admit, a blinking eye mask has to be a whole level of craziness higher.
I love the sound and noise cancelling of these headphones, but it's true the UX is clunky.
That's most certainly a massive improvement.
It's great hardware, they are so close to have the perfect product, but they are ruining it with these small annoying things. Get rid of the loud voice, of the bright led and of the tactile interface that both hard to use and triggers at inappropriate times and I'm sold!
It could have worked well, like Airpods do, but it doesn't. If my phone rings and I remove my airpods and answer holding my phone to my head, I expect the sound to come out of the phone. But the Sonys just stole the phone audio even if they were not on my ears at that moment.
You can disable that through the Android app.
> default is active noise cancelling, and it's broken most of the time
That's not my experience. Wonder if that was since the start as for me the noise cancelling is the sole reason I have it. If you want great sound quality it's often advised to buy something that's solely made for sound.
> The latter can be somewhat fixed with some good electrical tape
I've used "write everywhere pens" on annoying LEDs. Though up to now only on low-value devices (smoke alarms). This as I am terrible at only covering the LED, I often by accident write the area around it as well. You could cover everything except for the LED with some tape to prevent this though.
Gaffer’s tape works better for me because its material properties and packaging make it suitable for a wider range of applications.
It handles many of my off label uses for electrical tape and duct tape. It is designed for versatility.
Every time I use good tape I know it was worth it. Good tapes just tape better.
If I need lots of tape, I am using the wrong tape and two or three rolls of the wrong tape is just more of wrong.
I’ve also kept HDD and power LEDs unplugged for that reason, resorting to the motherboard’s RGB lighting set dimly as my power light.
Will people buy it?
Yes.
Let's make it, then.
If it made money, it was a good design.
I disagree. If it made money, it was a successful product, but there are tons of products that are successful despite them being the embodiment of terrible design.
I suppose the difference is I consider good enough design to be good design…and that the client is the customer for design and hence the client’s customers are not the customers for designs.
If the client wants a bright blue LED, they get a bright blue LED. They might also get an informed opinion as well. Or not.
So long as nobody dies and the check doesn’t bounce, we’re on to a winner.
Whether it makes money or not is irrelevant. Tons of people buy stuff because they don’t know better. Maybe it was a cheap mask, or maybe it was the only one sold at airports, or maybe it had aggressive marketing, or the Bluetooth feature was niche at the time. None of that has to do with design.
A designer designing a prison designs according to the objectives of the person writing the check, not the check writer’s customers.
A designer is just another service worker working a day job to buy a hamburger.
It’s not a product at all.
Design is a B2B business where some clients want prisons and others Bluetooth sleep masks.
You can imagine that there’s an existential difference between sleep mask buyers and inmates. But neither writes the check.
The worst part is that our Honeywell bedroom standing fan has a bright blue light panel for indicating speed... Who the fuck designed this shit. It's a fan, people are gonna use in it dark rooms. It legit lights up a room like those Christmas lights people hang along their ceiling. It's absurd
This is the fan I mean, the entire panel is a bunch of bright ass, sleep ruining LEDs. I covered it up years ago with a bandana
https://www.londondrugs.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-lon...
The sleep mode, and only the sleep mode has a bright white LED. The fan is completely dark on (1), and it lights up the entire room on (sleep). The level of stupid is unfathomable.
On that front I was actually surprised by the meaco 1056, while it’s way too expensive for what it is and I would not recommend it and it’s got way too many unnecessary LED behind piano black surface… it does have a “light off” mode which turns off the lights, and even in the base mode most of the LEDs draw down or turn off after a bit.
So cover it? Nope, LG designers have thought of that! The LED is built into the menu joystick nub. So covering it with electrical tape won't work.
Cover it anyway? Nope, LG designers are one step ahead of you! The back/bottom of the monitor is translucent white plastic, so the entire thing flashes in sleep mode!!
I complained to LG about it, got told that it was working as designed. The customer service rep was very confused about me wanting to stop 2 bright white flashing lights at night.
Never going to buy LG again. Utterly ridiculous.
Also, if the screen passes from "source lost" to standby (after turning off the pc) the pressing procedure should be repeated, and if you don't take care to the monitor, you stay here pressing the button 30 seconds for nothing...
Also x2 this AOC gaming monitor is the worst screen I've ever seen, its okay for gaming/video, while for every else use is absurdly too darker or too brighter (too bright even with luminosity set to 0 and adjustable only by a "shadow control" option, which is causing loss of image detail).
Well, now I no longer have a reason to avoid their monitors at least.
For reference, the monitor in question is the 38WN95C-W (https://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/ultrawide/38wn95c-w/).
It's an expensive device. It could be that the "privilege" of having that option is locked behind the price tag.
Engineers are developing these products in well-lit rooms with HVAC and that insulates them from the actual usage environment. I see it all the time and I do what I can to counter it.
I've seen the case where I had to caution one of my team members that the product he was coding was going to be used in a dangerous, chaotic environment that was nothing like the quiet, calm office he was demoing it in. And that taking a few seconds to figure out a setting (like he was proposing) could literally be the difference between life and death in actual operation.
In safety-critical industries we have FMEAs and UI reviews to prevent usage errors, but in "normal" development? Nope. No one thinks of these problems unless they have specific experience and that 10x dev you just hired may be a C++ genius, but he's never been a firefighter.
I'll say it again: people don't think!
I was a PM for a wearable product used on industrial sites. The engineering team suggested a lanyard as an option for the wearable. Anyone who's spent some time on industrial sites knows that lanyard-worn-anything is outright not allowed or highly frowned upon by HSE departments.
Or sometimes, they do, but they get overruled by Marketing.
Marketing: "Our focus group didn't like the holes on the side or back. Said it looked like ceiling tile. They liked when we mocked it up with holes half as big, though."
Engineering: "…That will cook the hard drive, and maybe the CD-ROM drive, too. Those holes are half the dia—"
Marketing: "After the warranty?"
Engineering: "Maybe. Maybe most of them. We'd have to test."
Marketing: "Great! We'll ship with the smaller holes, then."
3090, Unplugged leads with tweezers. Mobo, Blu-Tack. NIC, Blu-Tack - Notable mention of Intel NICs where you can disable LEDs in ethtool. Bedside lamp, Tape. Standing fan, Tape. yada yada etc. etc.
Only Gadgets I've remembered with light pollution considerations easily accessed is my Mitsubishi AC, Onkyo Reciever and LG OLED TV. All have a night mode where I can disable all illumination.
Also, you can turn motherboard LEDs off in every bios I've ever used. And the status LEDs, which usually only light up for errors.
That’s not really an option eg for people who share a flat.
Phone chargers have no power LEDs and we are fine. The phone tells you and notifies when charging state changes. It might give you notice when something is broken before you try to use it, so I can kinda get it, but really, I think we'd be fine.
LED clocks don't need to be there unless a user specifically buys one at night. Appliances could be screen off until a button press.
Power tool charger lights make sense. There's no display or Bluetooth, you'll probably be checking it and interested in the status, it needs some kind of onboard indicator. Then again, I would prefer there WAS Bluetooth and it broadcasted a notice, and a reflective LCD would be fine too.
Network activity lights are meaningless most of the time, there's always some background nonsense going. Maybe sometimes useful, I wouldn't mind if they went away. Same with disk, unfortunately.
Aesthetically, indicator lights look kind of junky. I don't associate them with high tech, because phones and ultra thin laptops lack them. They're always so highly utilitarian looking. We all know that if they really wanted to be fancy they'd use a TFT even if it's not needed.
Why do I need to know the status? Is it unreliable enough I need debug info? Ak I supposed to think about it a lot? Is it supposed to remind me to unplug it to save power? Why is it wasting power anyway?
Why use a simple circuit that is definitely going to work when you can implement a complex software based solution to do the same thing?
Honestly there are times a status LED is really useful for quick troubleshooting, I don't want to find some weird menu on a PC of have to get a shell on a server to see whether network came up on a device, if that device even is a PC, it could be an IOT device that the literal only way to even control it is through the very network you are connecting and also receives it's power over said network cable.
Sometimes utilitarian is exactly what you need, I don't need a fancy screen on my washing machine or dishwasher, it's a utility item I need to know it's doing what I told it and that is that.
People are quick to complain that their new fangled fridges and washing machines and light switches and dishwashers don't last longer than the warranty yet they are exactly like you and don't see how something simple and reliable is significantly more cost effective than a fancy one that has Bluetooth radios and screens and software that goes out of date.
New washers and stuff seem to break because mechanical parts wear out, and some new power tools do in fact have Bluetooth, so you know right away when it's charged and how much is left, on things like battery generator alternatives.
Also that stuff is not always done by the same people doing more meaningful things. I could easily build a Bluetooth charger. I could probably teach a beginner to design that kind of thing in months.
I couldn't do the same for a solar inverter that was any better than existing stuff though. I couldn't figure out the DSP involved in making a better pacemaker. I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I couldn't do anything to make the physical part of a tool better, except by adding more software self protection for it. If I worked at a tool company, what could I be doing instead of Bluetooth?
Which adds cost, complexity and failure modes.
Thanks what you are not working at a tool company.
Right?
Nobody needs BT in the power tools to prevent theft. No amount of BT would help you to retrive the stolen goods (see all those stories when police don't give a fuck for all these AirTags). Please, get a life.
In DeWalt's case, they are shut off if you get out of BT range. I would imagine it just slightly deters crackheads, or perhaps it helps fight organized retail theft gangs which are apparently a problem for tool companies.
Occasionally police do care about airtags. It's better than nothing. Better than trying to defend your property with force, when the criminal is going to be far better at fighting than me, because it's part of their profession. It's a cheap extra deterrent that makes their job a little harder.
Looks like you forgot what you need a battery there too. At this point just buy a phone and use it as flash drive. You can even call on it if you lost it, or lock it through Google account.
> I would imagine it just slightly deters crackheads
Crackheads steal first.
> it helps fight organized retail theft gangs which are apparently a problem for tool companies
Just like automobile anti-theft devices aren't a problem for the organized crime the measly BT shit wouldn't be a problem for organized crime.
> In DeWalt's case
It's an inventory system in the first place, not anti-theft.
> It's better than nothing
You just asking to add a battery, bluetooth module, micro-controller (at least) or a full blown computer (Raspberries as mundane programmable OTC parts in the electric scooters comes to mind from a recent news), some app - can you guarantee what a 5 y.o. cordless drill would work with a your new phone? Or more like your new phone would allow a 5 y.o. app to install and work?
> Better than trying to defend your property with force
You are trying to solve an administrative problem with a technical means.
> It's a cheap extra deterrent that makes their job a little harder.
It's not cheap. It's additional $5 (at least) BOM for everything and you would pay way more than $5 for it in the end product.
Oh, by the way - carbon footprint.
I 100% agree. Status LEDs are often really useful and important. They just shouldn't be blue, and shouldn't be bright.
They shouldn't be blue and they shouldn't be bright, I do like to have them though.
Some newer cases are coming out without a disk activity light, and I hate it.
That light is by far the quickest, simplest, easiest way of judging whether a computer is actively doing something. I can just look at it for a second and know! This is even more important now, since SSDs don't make any sounds.
Contrast anything else, say Task Manager, which even if I leave it minimized in the notification area I would still first need to wake up the monitor and/or unlock the computer. That's at least several seconds just so I can check if it's doing something.
I want my disk activity light back, damnit. KISS is a virtue.
I have a white anker charger with a blue (of course, it's always blue) LED so bright that I had to wrap the entire brick in light-blocking tape because the LED phased through the case everywhere.
Another favorite of mine was an USB M.2 enclosure that of course also had a blue LED (constant on = on, blinking = activity), but instead of using a side-emitting LED they used a top-emitting LED and just made it so incredibly bright that the light leaking out the side was still bright when viewed from outside the case. When you removed the case it was blindingly bright even in a well-lit room. Probably used more power than the USB chipset. Almost surprised you couldn't see it through the aluminium case.
Not everything needs to have a goddamn light on it. Seriously it doesn't. I quite like the feedback that phones have started to do where if you put something on a magsafe charger it initially does something so you know its charging and then darkens itself. It doesn't just sit there glowing like a magical item in some hellish RPG.
Last time, the thermostat was lighting the room with its very bright led. I had to put it a sock on. All people of my group complained.
Do they not test their rooms at hotels?
Airbnbs, on the other hand, usually come with the nightstand lights pre-unplugged in my experience, sometimes with the cables all coiled up neatly because everyone knows they’re only there for the listing photos and nobody will ever use them.
With you for the phone charger, usually another small light is reachable from the bed anyway.
My personal pet peeve is the thermostat. I usually cover it with some tape and thicker paper/carton
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Gaffer-Power-Non-Reflect...
When I found the hardware switch for the microphone the whole base of the device lit up in orange, with no way of turning the LEDs off without turning the microphone back on. The device also started speaking every time I touched it to "gently" remind me that the microphone was turned off while I was putting tape over the lights. I had to 10+ thin strips of duct tape in multiple layers in order to remove most of the light it radiated.
The "unplug device now to save energy" is a dubious harassment notice, especially when a hungry device goes into several charge cycles per night. That is really the sign of a badly implemented charge method with insufficient hysteresis.
My Dad had a Samsung phone he hated because he said, "It whimpers in the night" and turning off sound meant turning off the ringer.
It has the most infuriating feature. It has the blue status light, it is always on, wether the amp is on or off, it indicates nothing. Worse, the button doesn't pop in or out, there's actually no way of telling if the amp is on or off.
> The intensity of the blue power on LED can be adjusted to taste. In fact it can be turned off completely if you want. To adjust the intensity once the T0s are powered up and the blue LED is on and no music is playing...
My family enjoyed a half hour early evening "search and stick" mission to attenuate our home's luminous loudmouths.
In hindsight, it would have been better to put a Shelly puck behind the normal switch. Would have let me keep physical buttons too, instead of the annoying touch buttons.
I'm 41 years old and I've never in my life wished for the ability to turn a light on/off remotely. When do you use this?
> plus I've got some lights automatically tied to sunrise/sunset
Other than a porch light, what lights would you want to turn on/off at sunrise/sunset?
> And I've got a whole bunch of lights which I can turn off all together when going to bed.
Every room in my house has a light switch located at the entrance. I just flip the switch off as I'm passing it.
Do you just live in a house with bizarre locations for the light switches?
It’s nice when you forget a light in bed, but the real killer feature is the dimming and change of color.
Dimming and coloring might be cool, I guess. Any light that I'd want a dimmer on already has a dimmer, though.
I dunno. In the classic "Tech Enthusiast vs Engineer" meme [0], I lean towards the Engineer with a hint of Security tech. The only "smart" appliance I have is my thermostat, and even that's a rather basic Honeywell, not a fancy Nest. Technically, my clothes washer and TV are "smart", but I have never, and will never, connect them to my WiFi.
[0] https://michaelblume.tumblr.com/post/169525456166/tech-enthu...
I often find that the act of getting out of bed and turning the lights of makes it harder to fall asleep.
I am also skeptical to so called smart appliances and lean towards the paranoid.
A couple of years after getting my first one, I got a couple more for other rooms. Suddenly, one night I woke up and there was this bright blinking blue light in the room.
Turns out that they updated their Wall unit to have a blue indicator light when a refill is needed. I could imagine the rationalization for that product decision being that reminding users to refill would increase recurring revenue.
I have now replaced all my Febreze units with Air Wicks from Costco. Cheaper, more dispersal rate options, and no silly blue indicator light.
10/10
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DY1ZHKS?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...
- slow blinking is attempting to connect to DSL
- normal blinking is success
- Fast blink is fail
- there are 4 different LEDs. some even change colour.
It reminds me of how when my children were little, I was constantly disabling speakers on toys because so many were ear-blisteringly loud.
I also found this cool Legrand wiring device that fits in a single-gang box that has a photocell built in (auto-on and auto-off depending on light levels) and 1800k color temp: https://www.legrand.us/wiring-devices/outlets-and-receptacle...
I would guess that if you went to Target or Walmart, all the options are going to be 3000k-5000k, which is far too blue for night light use.
1/ kapton tape ( the orange/yellow semi transparent tape you find on battery packs and cable assemblies).
This not only reduces the light level, it can make it more green. Multiple layers for very bright leds.
2/ black vinyl wrap for LEDs that have no useful purpose.
3/ replacement LEDs and resistors for non SMD stuff that it is cheap enough to hack.
Or, if its property of keeping the last image on poweroff is a downside here, how about bringing back good old monochrome LCDs?
:)
But power/status LEDs can be so insanely bright that they'll light my bedroom from other rooms if I don't shut the door. So I rip them all out.
For a laptop it made perfect sense. Either the laptop is awake, or it's "sleeping". If I close the lid I want to know it's asleep and not running 100% generating all kinds of heat. The animation conveys this perfectly.
State isn't changed. You don't need to stare at the LED to make if the laptop is off or it's power LED is in 'not breathing atm' part of 'animation'.
There were 3 states. Different colors would have made a problem for color blind people. And 2 seconds was enough to see the LED was pulsing.
Current CPAP machine has green lights that turn off completely thirty seconds after it starts.
> Computer. Lights.
This is always repeated but I seriously doubt it’s ever actually relevant in practice. Like does anyone actually suffer from a sleep disorder that magically goes away when the evil blue LEDs on their devices are switched out for red ones?
I guess it depends on what you mean by sleep disorder? Blue lights make it hard for me to fall and stay asleep. White lights less so. Red lights don't bother me at all.