I finally started putting white labels over a bunch of these the other day. It had just gotten out of hand. A Minisforum mini-PC with a blindingly bright power light was the breaking point — that took three layers of label to bring the brightness down to a reasonable level.
I’ve also started actively trying to get devices that don’t have power or status lights, where possible. I don’t really need a USB hub with status lights. Used to be just PC components with unnecessary RGB bits that I avoided.
If it glows bright blue it gets the eletrical tape
Electrical tape + heat + time = a sticky gross mess you’ll have to deal with in a couple of years
You’re not wrong, but honestly, I suspect that some Goo-Gone or similar would knock out leftover adhesive.
I have seen people recommend that shiny aluminum-backed tape as being very opaque. Dunno what the adhesive is like on that.
Damn.
Then again, this may be like a “Simpsons did it” thing. If you’re trying to make nerd jokes, guess you’ll inevitably and involuntarily do something xkcd already did at some point.
The rule 34 of nerds - if it exists, there’s an xkcd for it
Certain things you don’t want off a Nas and server would be a good example.
If you are growing away for a while turning them off isn’t a bad thing. I leave my pi on but my dl380 is off.
What if you need that file that you forgot to copy to your travel disk?
Fuck it, I’m on vacation
That’s like saying you turn your space heater off. Literally.
Out of curiosity: how much power does consumen on average?
Turn the breaker off
Some would argue you want to leave the Wi-Fi on, even if it wastes some electricity. Turning it off whenever you leave becomes a good indicator of when you’re out of the flat/house for anyone watching - because you’re not likely to randomly turn it off like with the lights or TV
Well this makes sense, do you think people are that observant?
Thieves casing joints looking for one to break into? Yeah? Your neighbor, probably not.
But does that really happen to a normal person? Like would a thief regularly drive through my neighborhood checking to see what Wi-Fi was enabled/disabled? If you’re that paranoid, why is your Wi-Fi even publicly listed?
I can’t imagine a scenario that turning off your wifi signal would ever matter as far as thieves go
You can already hide your SSID which for 90% of people would be functionally the same as turning it off
A ton of wi-fi access points (most?) along with their locations are listed somewhere. Google had a big scandal over this some years back as, while the streetview cars drove around making streetview images, they were also surreptitiously hoovering up the names of WiFi APs. Their defense at the time was that they did it to “improve location accuracy” for end-users. (They weren’t technically wrong - but also, folks didn’t like having their WiFi APs in Google’s databases.) AFAIK, they still do this stuff, not (only) with their cars, but by hijacking every end user’s device to do the war-driving for them, keeping this massive trove of devices and their locations up-to-date in near-realtime.
There are also community-driven projects like wigle.net. That particular site has a surprisingly large number of devices for how small of a project it is. They have an app on f-droid allowing any user to war-drive for WiFi, Bluetooth, even cell towers, and optionally contribute to its public map.
Higher upend neighbourhoods that aren’t gated, maybe.
For the average Joe, no, unless you have something to make them target you, like a supped up car or something.
The term for this “vampire load” the power being consumed across a given network that’s doing literally nothing.
Those little LEDs are a tiny amount, but when they number in the millions, that shit adds up. People have calculated the cost in terms of tonnes of CO2.
Are you telling me I unknowingly did a comic on something called “vampire load” without any according pun and thus robbed myself an opportunity to do some Dracula joke about sleep mode and ramming a piece of wood through something to finally get it to really turn off? Damn.
Do a sequel/follow up
It’s still a tiny amount compared to global consumption.
Million of tiny LEDs vs one billionaire going to the bathroom (it’s favorite bathroom is in another country)
I wonder how much electricity gamer RGB lights on everything consumes? I turn mine off but I’m sure most don’t
A single diode is around .05w, so to leave one on for a year would use a whopping 438w. So a strip with a dozen would use around 5kw. Where I live that would cost you about 40c for the year at 8 cents per KWH.
That seems pretty significant to me if you multiply it by however many lights they put in to give it a rainbow effect, then multiplied by every gamer device from RAM to mouse, then multiplied by however many people have these products… I couldn’t find anything reputable online doing any kind of analysis though. Seems hard to calculate
It’s complicated.
For reference, a human using a pedal generator can do the work of about .1kwh. So bike for 4 hours and it’ll power that diode for the year.
But how many are off of solar? Where it’s entirely moot in the end? Yes, the power could be used elsewhere, hence the complicated. But if I’ve got balcony solar, and have excess, what’s wrong with that?
I kinda wish we had like a weird swear jar except its a little power bank thats connected to your stationary bike, elliptical, rowing machine, etc. of your choice and we could top up our houses drain on the grid.
This weird science if done in many homes could have a significant impact on the overall energy consumption and help reduce the demand on the grid.
I have absolutely no idea the numbers but I gotta imagine a 40min intense ride or row could generate enough power to like use a toaster oven or power the dishwasher.
You mean like a battery?
Your username and my comment. Yes, like a battery idk why I said swear jar or power bank. LOL
My toaster is 4 slots, and is 1560w. So if you max it out, and say cook your toast for 5 minutes, 1/12 of an hour. That would need 130wh of energy. So if it’s ther “average” of .1kwh from a pedal generator, 1 hour and 20 minutes roughly for your 4 slices of partly burnt toast.
Damn that’s great analysis! I love how you did that. Thank you!
Definitely its a storage solution, but I am shocked how much power that consumes.
I built my current machine RGB’d out… it was a bit of a nightmare to assemble with all the extra wiring, but it was marvelous when I first turned it on. I spent some time customizing the lights and it looked so pretty. About a week later, I had most of the lights turned off most of the time… then one fan’s lights went wonky, so it just stayed dark always. Then my AIO had an issue… I replaced it with black air cooler, took out all my RGB fans, and replaced them with better, quieter black fans. The whole machine is blacked out now and super quiet. It was a learning experience for me.
Those little LEDs are a tiny amount
Sorry for nitpicking, but those leds just indicate that something is still consuming power. Usually a transformer feeding voltage to a board that’s waiting for some input. The LED itself really is negligable.
And even if there is no LED, many devices don’t even have a proper “off” mode.
The NAS… Who doesn’t leave that on? Kinda pointless if it’s not available when you need it.
Plus the router is PoE, so it has to stay on to run things that need to be on.
Forgetting the massive array of fans sitting on every free surface in my home? That I do. Without intent.
Could be a local-only NAS
I bought a somewhat fancier tea kettle on sale a while ago and the whole day, you can hear it making some noise when you get your head close. I’m guessing, it’s a form of coil whine.
And yeah, that just irritates me so much. It doesn’t need to do anything at all, unless I press a button on it, so why is it whining?
Why are all those lights scattered on the wall?
I think it’s a dark room, can just see them from that spot. Tv, charger, microwave, etc
Why does he has very big eyes and she has very small ones
Glasses.
Wait you guys don’t stop your home server!?
No, I often watch TV when I’m gone. I’ve got a couple public sites on there as well
why would I?
No
Where blue lights?
I cover those blinding little bastards with black electrical tape, then use a pin to poke a tiny hole in it. Still brighter than green or red but significantly reduced.
- Router is on, but wifi is down
- NAS is down
- Don’t own a TV or Stereo
- Doorbell Camera and Backdoor Camera are up
- Pi is up (HomeAssistant + NVR)
- Proximity sensors in house are up
