Hello all..

I moved recently and my new bedroom is much darker than my old one. My MP3 file server's extremely bright blue power LED has become too bright at night for me to handle any longer. It is connected to the mobo with a standard two pin connector. Can I solder a resistor into the wiring to dim the LED substantially or should I just go out and get a dimmer LED to replace it? What type of resistor should I use?

Thanks for your advice in advance

I wanted to ask a question like this as well. When I got my new mobo, my case LED started working (yes, the old mobo was so bad even the pins didn't work correctly).

I don't know if anyone here owns a Lian-Li case, or if they are all the same, but I'm serious when I say that this LED lights up my entire bed at night. When all the lights are out, I can clearly see the poster that hangs over my bed.

I'd like to know if there's a way to choose when the light is on, either through software or some kind of hardware. Making it dimmer would only bother me slightly less. I already have to cover up the LED on my Promedia speakers which have no power button, so the LED is on 24/7

I moved recently and my new bedroom is much darker than my old one. My MP3 file server's extremely bright blue power LED has become too bright at night for me to handle any longer.

Two words: Duct Tape.

Actually, I prefer black electrical tape, but same effect.

Naah. Take the real band-aid approach. Allows for easy customisation

On multiple occasions, I've used black shrink-tubing over a too-bright LED to reduce its glow. I make it so that the tubing closes over the top of the LED a bit, essentially making the visible area on the front of the LED much smaller. Experimenting with different sizes of shrink tubing and adjusting the length and position should produce decent results.

I've done this on both my Mk1 and Mk2 player's standby LEDs, works like a charm. For the Mk1 it was very critical because it's now my living-room player mounted right next to the TV. So the standby LED would have been much too bright and distracting without doing this.

Can I solder a resistor into the wiring to dim the LED substantially or should I just go out and get a dimmer LED to replace it? What type of resistor should I use?

Sure you can. Exact value of resistor depends on supply voltage (likely to be 5 or 12V), the forward voltage drop of the LED and wanted current through the LED - the last two factors are open for speculation as we don't know the exact type of LED.

Therefore my suggestion is to use a small potentiometer (variable resistor) of 4.7k or 10k Ohm value. Wire one of the side legs together with the centre leg. Snip one of the wires to the LED and connect one end to the single leg and the other to the combined legs. This allows you to adjust the resistance from 0 Ohm (ie same state you have today) up to the value of the potentiometer.

/Michael

Hello Tony and Michael

Thank you for your suggestions, I will be heading to Radio Shack this week to pick up the goodies I need

If you go the shrink-tubing route, make sure not to melt or burn your PC's casing.

One should always keep the flamethrower at the "low" setting when working with shrink tubing.

If you go with the resistor/potentiometer, don't dribble solder all over the motherboard

/Michael

One should always keep the adjacent area covered in the event of spills. Or keep a solder sucker handy.

If you go with the duct tape, uh.... hmm... uhh.... don't stab yourself with the scissors when cutting it!

*sigh*

Well. Don't duct tape paint work is a good one
As for soldering, actually go out and buy a proper soldering iron and not those huge things you get for soldering in a car...

- Trevor

I think that the easiest thing for me to do is just to remove the LED completely from the box so I can work on it...I drilled the hole precise enough that the LED body fits snugly to be held in without glue, therefore I can just pop it out to apply the shrink tubing or solder the wiring without risk of *&%!#ing up my box....

If I've understood Tonys fix with the shrink tubing correctly, the tubing goes over the body of the LED and then shrinks the opening at the front, decreasing light output by decreasing the "active front area". Ie you'll have to increase the diameter of the hole to allow for 2x the thickness of the shrink tubing.

/Michael