Mike Elgan over at Computer World (magazine) has an interesting take on the various electronic devices everyone probably has in their bedroom. Rather, he has an interesting take on the ubiquitous status LEDs and lit displays that come on them.
It’s interesting that he gets around to this now, because a few months ago, I got tired of all the light in my bedroom. Setting aside TBND’s floodlights (because her house wasn’t completely rebuilt at the time), I still had an interesting amount of light at night. I resolved to change this, and my weapons of choice were a few pieces of cardboard (reasonably able to block light) and black duct tape (also good at blocking light).
I turned off the lights, looked for an LED or other lit display, and did my best to get rid of it. The following is the sum total of what I covered up.
-Wireless router: 5 green status LEDs. Not completely successful (two status LEDs on the incoming, recessed ethernet port).
-Microwave oven: clock at least 10x as bright as my alarm clock.
-LCD television: status LED that curiously shines red to indicate the device is “off”, but turns off when the TV itself is on.
-Ethernet hub: 12 status LEDs. Blinking.
-Power strip: 1 LED. Bright green.
-Battery backup unit for PC: 1 LED. Bright green.
-Battery backup unit for other minor equipment. 3 LEDs. Bright green.
-Scanner: bright green LED to indicate power present. Unplugged.
-Cordless phone: bright green LED on base station. Amazingly, no lighting on phone unless caller ID activates for an incoming call.
With these turned off, my room was almost completely dark. There is still a very light red glow from my alarm clock, but I like being able to see my alarm clock. In the winter months, if it weren’t lit up, I wouldn’t be able to find it to smash it for waking me up.
If I have my PC turned on? One more bright green LED, plus an amazing blue glow out the back. I have one of those power supplies someone thought it would be cute to put a LED ring into, in case the purchaser has a case like this. Said power supply will be replaced in the next few months by something less annoying.
Luckily all my LEDs are in the main room since Clancy won’t let me have a computer in the bedroom. My fileserver’s case has some lights that I finally got hooked up the last time I made a chance to it. I wish I hadn’t done that. The lights on the case are fierce and light up the entire room. Prior to that it was actually lit by a single light on the docking bay for my Pocket PC. I can’t for the life of me think of a reason for a light that strong on such a small device.
Back when we were living in Deseret and there was a computer in the bedroom, the worst I had was the power supply to one of my machines. It was the only heavy-duty one I could find in the Deseret town that I worked in. It had a sort of strobe effect. I didn’t mind that as much since it was more like a soothing tye-dyed nightlight rather than a piercing light like on the fileserver and PPC dock. Fortunately the Power and HDD LEDs are not particularly striking.
Comment by trumwill — May 14, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
You have a microwave in the bedroom?
Comment by Peter — May 15, 2007 @ 7:37 am
The bedroom’s big enough to be a studio apartment, really (one of the advantages of sharing a 2-story house). I occasionally use the microwave just for convenience’s sake.
Comment by Webmaster — May 15, 2007 @ 8:49 am
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