LED colors

[Phillip Porch, MD]

I noticed when testing the LEDs that some were a pretty bright white and others seemed less intense and had a yellowish hue to them. I don't think it looks bad, kind of like you had some incandescent lights that were older and not quite as bright. It looks like there might have been 2 lots of LEDs in my kit. I wondered if anyone else had noticed this?

[Mike Arrington]

I had the same problem.  CEDS is aware of the problem.

I purchased the rack version and the LEDs that came with the rack kit were yellow.  The console part of the kit had a mix of both white and yellow.  I was able to use the rack's yellow LEDs to substitute for the console's white LEDs.  There were enough white LEDs to make the I/O panel one color.  

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 3:32 PM Phillip Porch, MD <ppp...@gmail.com> wrote:

I noticed when testing the LEDs that some were a pretty bright white and others seemed less intense and had a yellowish hue to them. I don't think it looks bad, kind of like you had some incandescent lights that were older and not quite as bright. It looks like there might have been 2 lots of LEDs in my kit. I wondered if anyone else had noticed this?

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[Phillip Porch, MD]

Thank you for confirming this. You were smart to sort them into colors. I was just checking that they worked and didn’t think about separating them. 

[Oscar Vermeulen]

Philip,

Can we fix this for you? Send some extra LEDS and a solder sucker to replace the wrong-mix LEDs? Or a new IO panel, that might be quicker than replace the LEDS on that one. For the main PCB, just changing some LEDs will be quicker.

Yes. We are now testing every single LED that goes into a kit, until we are sure we have a batch of the LEDs delivered from the manufacturer themselves. That is no fun, I can tell you...

It is the reason no new kits went out for a week, we start tomorrow again.

But I got to make you good on this :-(

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Kristen R.]

I haven't noticed this LED color issue, but wasn't looking for it.  Is there an easy way to turn on all LEDs at the same time?

Thanks,
  Kristen

[Oscar Vermeulen]

Kristen,

On Thursday, October 9, 2025 at 2:35:06 AM UTC+2 k...@elitemail.org wrote:

I haven't noticed this LED color issue, but wasn't looking for it.  Is there an easy way to turn on all LEDs at the same time?

It was a one-off fluke - the manufacturer put two tones of white in one bag of 1,000. I think we've chased up the expected 7 kits that were affected. But if you have one, let us know. This group in general is far too nice in accepting things like this.

Another problem we're currently grappling with: it seems about 0.5% of the LEDs are not working. Or maybe they too are the wrong colour, black?

So now we test every single LED before it goes in a kit. It is not fun, and is why we're slow shipping out kits. Well, we're running out of PCBs soon too, as JLCPCB delayed a 2-week order into a... 8 week turnaround, by now? 

I'm sure someone will say this LED problem can be solved by buying through Mouser. Yes. If we want to add $50 to the cost of each kit. We'll just keep checking all LEDs until we receive the parts for a little LED tester, that will then be part of the kit.

Because not many things are more annoying than soldering up a PiDP-1, discovering one LED is dead, bug hunting why that is (the rule is 'least likely is a dead part', so go check all your soldering etc), and then having to take the machine apart.

So, a little LED tester will be part of the kit as soon as the parts (we need a USB cable for this) arrive. Till then, I plan not to see Jose in person because he's not thrilled by this. But agrees it is necessary.

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Adam Thornton]

Also I know the warnings are very scary on "don't heat a switch for more than 7 seconds" but I have not broken one yet, even when desoldering a very recalcitrant one.

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[Unibus]

Hi,

Hopefully your LED tester has a reference LED wired in series so that you can compare colour, intensity and presentation with the LEDs under test.

Regards,

Garry

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[Malcolm Ray]

Well, I had one dead LED out of 194 (0.5%), and I'm sure it wasn't one of those legendary black LEDs, because it tested as open circuit.

All the other LEDs are the same colour and approximate brightness.

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[Oscar Vermeulen]

On Friday, October 10, 2025 at 2:45:19 PM UTC+2 uni...@gmail.com wrote:

Hopefully your LED tester has a reference LED wired in series so that you can compare colour, intensity and presentation with the LEDs under test.

That won't be necessary, the problem was with LEDs of two different colors. I think Warm White and Cold White. The wholesaler gave us one bag with a mix of them!

The real problem is 'black LEDs' versus 'warm white LEDs', so a little tester for that would suffice. It is just tremendously annoying to find your board with a LED that does not work. Because, is it a soldering problem? Or a dead LED? Then you have to open up the panel and replace it. That is too annoying.

So for now we test all LEDs in each kit to eliminate this risk. But that's not sustainable... then the LED tester will be the line of defence.

Kind regards,

Oscar.