Why does every small appliance or useful home electronics item have the BRIGHTEST LEDs in them?

I bought a new fan for our bedroom Sunday. It has 4 speed settings, and LEDs to display which setting you’re on.

Just like every other electrical device in our bedroom, I had to cover the LEDs with electrical tape because they are TOO DAMM BRIGHT. That one light was more than bright enough for me to see in the room with all the lights off.

I can’t sleep well if there’s a lot of light like that, especially blue light, and it’s like every fucking electronics manufacturer used the same extra bright blue LEDs.

All of our power strips have them. Same brightness.

The fans have them.

Don’t even get me started on digital clocks and the plague of bright LEDs that they bring about

Many charging plugs have them built into the plug itself.

Even some fucking light switches have them now!

I have about 6 different things in our bedroom that have electrical tape over their completely unnecessary LEDs.

Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?

    • Russianranger@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The electrical tape approach is what I did and it did wonders. Went from having a myriad of green and blue LEDs on my fans/portable AC/etc to complete wonderful darkness when I retired for the night. Made a distinct difference in my ability to fall asleep faster at night. I hate having lights when going to bed. Darkness or bust.

    • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      You can actually buy tinted tape to dim them without completely blacking them out. So you can take your clock from “bright enough to keep your entire bedroom lit” to “just bright enough to read in the dark.”

      Found out while watching Technology Connections. Bright blue monochromatic LEDs are one of his biggest pet peeves, and he mentioned the tinted tape off-hand in one of his videos.

    • baru@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have a black pen that can write on plastic. I’ve used that to dim the insanely bright LED on a smoke detector. If you are careful (I wasn’t) then this method looks nicer than putting some tape on a device.

  • Brad Ganley@toad.work
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    1 year ago

    I get to be that guy! I’m so excited!

    In power strips, the lights are (in the overwhelming majority of cases) actually a neon bulb! They’re cheaper for that specific purpose because they can be powered directly off of the mains power with a single resistor.

    Your point is entirely valid and I bear the same cross, this is just a fun fact you can use to impress colleagues, strangers, and potential lovers, dazzling them with your deep esoteric knowledge of and passion for illuminators in power strips.

    • c2h6@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hah, this is what I liked the most about reddit - learning random bits of knowledge about things I knew nothing about. I’m glad to see this happen here too!

    • Magiwarriorx@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is also why those power strip lights can sometimes flicker in the dark. They are sometimes over-driven for extra brightness; this does cut their lifespan, but they usually still last for many years regardless. However, towards the end of that shortened lifespan, the accumulated damage to the electrodes leads to flickering as it struggles to keep the neon excited. However, incoming photons can give just a little extra nudge, which sometimes is enough to keep the neon excited and glowing.

      • I'm Hiding 🇦🇺@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Especially when they’re in one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks with headlights that are right at eye level for anyone in a normal car. Even being followed by a forty year old Mack semi isn’t nearly as bad, because they’ve at least got sealed beam headlights.

        • linuxFan@lib.lgbt
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          1 year ago

          “… one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks …”

          Why’d you say American Pickup Trucks twice?

          I kid, but really those things are hideous. The front end looks like a Baleen whale feeding.

      • thatgirlwasfire@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Depending where you are, the bright bulbs help spot deer. Though if you are in the suburbs that might not be really much of a problem

      • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My pet peeve is not just the brightness, but the blueness. These things are fucking blue raspberry slurpee blue. Paired with a very reddish orange turn signal they come up behind me and indicate and I think I’m getting pulled over for a sec.

      • valek879@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is why I always have the high beans on when driving my 90’s car. I’ve got to fit in with the cool kids (oh and be able to see the road despite the blinding lights coming at me.)

        • Rakn@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          Not sure if you are joking or not. But at times that’s actually what I think about and sometimes even do. If there is a car with too bright lights coming down the road I’ll turn on the high beams because it reduces my ability to see the road otherwise.

    • Paradox@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Might be some solace in the near future. Pixel Light is becoming a thing, where the car will selectively black out part of the headlight beam for oncoming traffic.

    • Reamen@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They installed LEDs in the road lights near me and they had a faulty film cover that turned purple 😆 now they whole highway is light up purple at night!

  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Because they’re cheap and look “modern/futuristic” so shit manufacturers love them. I have also used electrical tape on power strips, chargers, smoke detectors, etc

    • Dnn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That and your average electrical engineer will consider an LED useful that signals the device has power.

      Most probably then don’t consider where the device is actually used. In a well-lit office space that LED doesn’t annoy anyone.

  • godless@latte.isnot.coffee
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    1 year ago

    Agree. When my DVD player back in 2000 came with a bright blue power-on LED, that crap started to bother me. Sitting right under the TV, so watching anything in a darkened room means I had that fucker blinding me all the time. Nothing a little duct tape can’t fix, but that’s not exactly helping.

    Ever since I’ve been actively avoiding devices where I can’t dim & disable the LEDs.

  • SageWaterDragon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have a similar complaint about almost all “gamer gear” having RGB lighting. Why would I want that? I’m not even opposed to the “gamer” aesthetic of a lot of sharp lines and strong colors, I think that can look really good, but when my mousepad has RGB it’s time to blow the whistle and stop all manufacturing until we can figure out what’s going on.

  • Saigonauticon@voltage.vn
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    1 year ago

    I design electronics sometimes. Generally, people want an indicator light on their product, since it’s a cheap way to show the state of a system.

    The main problem is, the human eye adapts to darkness. You can still clearly see an LED in a dark room when a few microamperes pass through them, but then they are useless in brighter light in that case. There’s no specific amount of current that produces light that’s bright enough in a lit room, but isn’t too bright in a dark room.

    I can fix that by occasionally turning off the LED and measuring voltage across it (LEDs detect light in addition to emitting it), then dimming it if I’m in a dark room. However, this is quite complicated to do and requires a capable microcontroller and a pretty ninja embedded systems programmer. Most product developers I know won’t think of specifically doing this.

    Finally, I can save 0.1 cents (plus board space plus assembly complexity, which cost more) by connecting an LED directly to the pins of a microcontroller instead of using a resistor to limit current. Some microcontrollers specifically allow this, up to 10 or 20 milliamperes, which is enough to be too bright in some contexts already. Margins on hardware manufacture are extremely thin, so optimizing even 1 cent off a board is pretty important.

    All of this together leads to a lot of LED proliferation, which I’ don’t like either. The stuff I build for myself often has a way to control the LED brightness, although this would be too expensive to add to a consumer product as a general rule. For small devices, there’s a tilt switch inside that turns off the indicator LEDs if you turn it upside down and hold it for a few seconds. That way you can just reach over at night and fix it without fiddling for switches or controls.

  • can@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I miss the days of red LEDs. I understand blue were new and novel at one point but that’s passed.

      • nekat_emanresu@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Our fresh state of the art new innovation, neoBlue© coloured LEDs, using novaBright technology(patent pending) to brighten your days and lead to a fresh and exciting future filled with the latest stunning luxuries.

  • LDRMS@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know if this is the right place to complain about this but since it’s LED related… Why are all the automakers putting the brightest fucking LED’s in their new vehicles now?? They are legit brighter then how high beams used to be only a few years back!!

    What did we all used to do when headlights used to be slightly yellow??

    • Knusper@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, there used to be regulations on this stuff, because you kind of just end up in an arms race.
      Pretty much the only reason you’d want brighter headlights, is so that if someone blinds you with their bright headlights, you still see things behind that.

      • LanyrdSkynrd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We’re also in a big vehicles arms race. I’m always telling people about how big vehicles cause more kids to get run over, more pedestrians to die, more damage in accidents, etc. The most common response from giant vehicle owners is that it makes them feel safer in an accident.

        In 10 years they’ll probably all be driving tanks with stadium lights mounted on top.

  • Veraxis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Electrical engineer here who also does hobby projects. I’m with you. I think some of the reason may be that modern GaN-type green or blue LEDs are absurdly efficient, so only a couple mA of drive current is enough to make them insanely bright.

    When I build LEDs into my projects, for a simple indicator light, I might run them at maybe only a tenth of a milliamp and still get ample brightness to tell whether it is on or not in a lit room. Giving them the full rated 10 or 20mA would be blindingly bright. I also usually design most things with a hard on/off switch so they can be turned all the way off when not in use.

    Of things I own normally I also have two power strips with absurdly bright LEDs to indicate the surge protection. It lights up my whole living room with the lights off. If I had to have something like that in my bedroom, I would probably open it up and disconnect the LEDs in some way, or maybe modify the resistor values to run at the lowest current I could get away with.

    I feel like designers have lost sight of the fact that these lights are meant to be indicators only-- i.e. a subtle indication of the status of something and not trying to light a room-- and yet they default to driving them at full blast as if they were the super dim older-gen LEDs from 20+ years ago.

  • Sinthesis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Next level pro-tip: Use a “dot” or dab of dark nail polish to tone down the intensity. It’s more permanent than the tape method but will allow you to see if the LED is on or off so doesn’t remove functionality.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Black electrical tape is usually pretty long-lasting in my book, but nail polish sounds like a good idea too given that it dries pretty quickly

  • damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I have a lamp and that has an LED that is on all the time.

    Why would a lamp have a permanently on LED? That’s what I get for getting cheap crap from China, rather than premium crap from China.

  • oleorun@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have opened up devices to physically remove the led. SMD LEDs stand no chance against a steady hand and a precision flathead screwdriver.

    • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      precision flathead screwdriver

      Ah yes. Just like my precision printer adjustment mallet.

    • Landrin201@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Yep, its part of why this drives me crazy. I notice a big difference in my sleep when I’m in, say, a hotel that has any of these LEDs in it.

    • himbocat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You actually have to pay a premium to avoid lightshow pc hardware nowadays. If i had to guess, someone over at marketing for these companies figured out that people who want blacked out hardware skew older or professional and are willing to pay.

      • Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        Pretty much. I was actually purchasing a computer build and it was cheaper to give the build a cohesive RGB look. The main thing jacking the price up was the RAM. The RGB RAM was cheaper to get than the non-RGB one.

        I don’t think RGB would be that bad as an aesthetic choice if all the companies actually stuck to one standard like how we have SATA, USB, etc., but they don’t. Most of my RGB components are from Corsair so it’s not a huge problem as iCUE can control it, but if you’ve got different vendors and/or you use Linux, it’s trickier. This is what OpenRGB is trying to solve, and what Level1Tech and Gamer’s Nexus are trying to sort out with OpenPleb.

        • Metallibus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Most of them you don’t have a choice. There are fans that light up when the fan has any power at all. Motherboards have integrated lights. GPUs have internal LEDs…

          Sure, you could desolder some of them, but that’s harder.