Wired News: Backlash Brews Over Blue LEDs

Never realized blue LEDs could be so distracting.

Wired News: Backlash Brews Over Blue LEDs

Interesting. This gels with my perception that the blue-white light of most LED lights are more effective at ruining someone's night vision than the yellowish incandescents.Perhaps a really high-powered blue would be the best lightsource for Flash-n-bash-jutsu.

Not suprising. A friend of mine has several E-Machines, and when the light is off in his computer room the blue led logos on the front of the machines throw die patterns on the far walls. Whe have had to cover the blue indicator lights on the front of a couple Replays when they were sitting next to the TV. They are brutal to have at the edge of your peripheral vision when you are watching a movie in a darkened room.

I received an email not all that long ago, and my reply almost parroted the contents of that article. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

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ErickThakrar said:
Interesting. This gels with my perception that the blue-white light of most LED lights are more effective at ruining someone's night vision than the yellowish incandescents.Perhaps a really high-powered blue would be the best lightsource for Flash-n-bash-jutsu.

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The light from royal blue Luxeon V is painful to the eyes just being bounced off a wall - let alone being shined directly in your eyes. I did it once briefly just for the experience, and my already daylight adjusted eyes had spots for a good 10 minutes. A royal blue Luxeon V in a 6 C/D cell maglite would be the ideal flash-n-bash device.

Hmm. blue doesn't bother me that much. I have a RB LuxIII in my dome light and look right into it when switching between that and white. I never understood why people would complain about HID lights by glaring more. Even with contacts (which create starbursts halos over lights) I find yellow incandecents much more blinding than HID at night. They cast way larger corona, even though the higher the wavelength the less dust/etc lights up in the air less than lower wavelengths. You can see this by a blue/cyan luxeon flashlight and a red one at night. The red does have a visable beam, but less so.

I think why incandecents bother me more is the flood of light from the bare bulb. HID is usualy behind an asyperical lens and has a horizontal cut off and you only get it in the eye if you are aligned just right. But it always seems less painfull and doesn't starbust as much /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

More on topic: I saw a good point in the article, it said blue LEDs are more bright than the old red/Green LED's. I think that is mainly the problem. I've been bugged by a friends computer case with RED LED's on the front that blind me just as bad as Blue ones do!! The Red leds are the high brightness kind!!

I had for over a year once a 5mm high brightness Blue LED as an indicator light in my dash of my car. I resistored it down until it was just as bright as an "old school" green led. It was aimed right at my eyes while driving at night and did not bother me one bit at all. It was a narrow angle one too, and I had it so low you could see the LED die just fine. I guess I could have sanded it to make it diffused and it would of lit up more like an old led (perhaps with less resistance), but this way worked fine too.

I have been surprised by manufactors putting these LEDs in stuff but using ultra bright, or not resistoring them down. I think cool different colored LED's, but wait, why do they have them so bright!!! I saw a UV/Purple one one time on speakers in a computer store and it wasn't too bright, but that was probably because it was a UV led!!!

Some companies get it right, the tablet PC's from gateway have pink and blue leds, and they don't blind you. They are diffused and dimmed.

I find that green, while more visible, is not as distracting.

What's most annoying to me is the news 'crawl' at the bottom of the TV. Easiest to just tape it over- I did that just after the crawl started.

greenlight, it may be that the contrast/specturm is wider and lets you see better. Cyan light is the best I've found for this. See beezaur's post...

Your iris responds to the intensity of shorter wavelengths as opposed to longer wavelengths. So yes, a blue LED will definately effect your night vision more than a red LED. However for other purposes, having your iris closed more is a benefit. Just like a camera, when you close the iris more, you get better depth of field.

I've always find these blue leds distracting and annoying every since people started to mod their PCs and adding blue leds. He's just now finding it out?

"O'Meara said his company has developed technology to manufacture low-intensity blue LEDs"

Sorry, but /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif

hello, bought new keyboard--saitek eclipse. it has a blue led under each key that shines thru the key for identification. it has three levels of light: high, medium, and off. i hate the color!!! when the leds are turned on, the letters disappear or get fuzzy. it works best when they are turned off. duh. have e-mailed manuf. to see if leds are soldered in before i open up the case. would like to have them green. when i ride around at night and look at neon signs: green is very readable, blue is fuzzy, and red is ok. not sure which wavelength is best for visual acuity.

A good place to start is the dashboard of a car. BMW uses a R/O because it has a very low impact on night vision. VW uses blue for branding, but frankly, I will not buy one just for that reason.

If you want a good comparison, by wife's van has a bright blue "high beam" indicator. I have to tape over it to drive at night - really distracting.

No kidding. My dad's VW golf uses a blue backlight for the radio display - it's damn near impossible to focus on it at night - I can hardly make out the digits on the display.

I read about this in another forum, here's a copy of the post I made in response...

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"After buying a PC case in May 2004, Li recalled, "I was actually impressed.... The blue light lit up the entire room." "

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And there's the problem IMHO. It's not the fact that the LEDs are blue that's the problem, it's thoughtless manufacturers using the highest intensity ones they can find. Like the article says...

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"There are a lot of products out there that aren't designed intelligently at all," lamented designer Eash.

"Some researchers report that, at night, even low-level blue light may be enough to trigger recently discovered receptors in the retina that can depress melatonin production, disrupt sleep patterns and suppress the immune system."

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Hmmm... note the use of the words "some" and "may" in that sentence. Drinking alcohol at night can also disrupt sleep patterns, by preventing the sleeper from falling into the Stage III and IV deep sleep that is the most healing and restorative, but I don't suppose that revelation is going to stop anybody drinking alcohol in the evening.

There was an another post in the same thread, which said...

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There was an interesting paper about enivornmental lighting at Showlight this year. Amongst other interesting titbits was the fact that the presence of light with a colour temperature above 2000 K had an effect on melatonin production. The researchers had managed to significantly improve sleeping patterns on a maternity ward by reducing the colour temperature of the lighting to below 2000K.

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See this led color poll.

Interesting comments, but moonlight is very very blue. I wonder how our ancestors and the animals sleep when the moon is up. Actually, maybe they don't since they would be most vulnerable then?

If you have a bright light, visual acuity is better if the light tends towards the blue as opposed to the red. An easy way to prove this is to try reading a book with a regular flashlight and an LED flashlight (making sure the book is nice and bright). The text will be crisper with the LED light (for most people at least). However, it will kill your night vision, so having blue lights around when you are trying to see at night is not good!

I've noticed that also. I frequently work around densely-packed color coded wires, and I've found that t he crisper light from an LED produces much better color rendering and enables me to differentiate colors that are close to each other in hue and saturation. Some of my colleagues have reported the same.

Good points.

Now that you mention it, I find thet the Blue LED on my ASUS Pocket PC that indicates that WiFi or Bluetooth is on just iritates the heck out of me, especially when I'm working in a low light situation. The green power light right next to it doesn't bother me at all.

I have taped over it with some electrical tape a few times to block it.

HID headlights bounce nicely off wet roads, literally blinding on comming drivers. Really nasty, I hate them.

I usually have to pull off the road, since I cannot see where the lane is, the lane markers, and where the actual edge of the road is. I consider them actually dangerous.