I have an RPI 4 in my room. When I sleep the red light fills a big part of the room. I don't want to turn the pi off as I want 24/7 availability. Its ability to be quiet and always available is why I find it appealing to use.
I thought about ducktaping it, but I find hardware solutions to be brutal (+ I can always do it if I get too fed up with it).
Is there a script I can write to turn it off?
Should work by writing the appropriate value to /sys/class/leds/led1/trigger on older OS.
Use /sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/PWR/trigger on kernel6 which replaced the confusing led1 with explicit PWR (ACT is used for activity LED).
cat /sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/PWR/trigger will show all supported values; the value in […] is the current value.
To permanently change use the dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none in config.txt
To switch it off use none, e.g.:
sudo su
echo none > /sys/class/leds/led1/trigger
#OR:
echo none | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led1/trigger
Use default-on to reverse it.
There's a bunch of controls you can use in /boot/config.txt
act_led_trigger Choose which activity the LED tracks.
Use "heartbeat" for a nice load indicator.
(default "mmc")
act_led_activelow Set to "on" to invert the sense of the LED
(default "off")
N.B. For Pi 3B, 3B+, 3A+ and 4B, use the act-led
overlay.
act_led_gpio Set which GPIO to use for the activity LED
(in case you want to connect it to an external
device)
(default "16" on a non-Plus board, "47" on a
Plus or Pi 2)
N.B. For Pi 3B, 3B+, 3A+ and 4B, use the act-led
overlay.
pwr_led_trigger
pwr_led_activelow
pwr_led_gpio
As for act_led_*, but using the PWR LED.
Not available on Model A/B boards.
And
Name: act-led
Info: Pi 3B, 3B+, 3A+ and 4B use a GPIO expander to drive the LEDs which can
only be accessed from the VPU. There is a special driver for this with a
separate DT node, which has the unfortunate consequence of breaking the
act_led_gpio and act_led_activelow dtparams.
This overlay changes the GPIO controller back to the standard one and
restores the dtparams.
Load: dtoverlay=act-led,<param>=<val>
Params: activelow Set to "on" to invert the sense of the LED
(default "off")
gpio Set which GPIO to use for the activity LED
(in case you want to connect it to an external
device)
REQUIRED
For example my Zero has
dtparam=act_led_activelow=on
so that the LED isn't a power LED, but works like a activity LED (on other RPis)
Take a look at /boot/overlays/README for details.
You probably want
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=on
to turn your RED LED off. I don't have a RPi4B, so I can't test that and confirm it does what you want. This does the same thing as @Dirk's answer but without needing a script run at boot time.
/boot/config.txt using a dtparam line, and the dtoverlay as it suggests in /boot/overlays/README. It also seems that there is no dtoverlay for pwr-led as there is for act-led. It's fairly confusing in there - perhaps I've made a bodge of it?
– Seamus
Jun 12 '21 at 06:31
I wanted to confirm and abbreviate Dougie's answer in that putting these lines in /boot/config.txt worked for me in accomplishing this goal:
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=on
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=on
Note that act_led_trigger/pwr_led_triger can be set to "none." There are various other options for these parameters, including "heartbeat." When you change this file, you will need to reboot the Pi in order to see the changes take effect; there might be a shortcut to avoid having to reboot that I'm not aware of.
echo gpio | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger. Take a look at /sys/class/leds for proper names of your leds. Then you can blink them with echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness and echo 0 consecutively.
– user3603546
Feb 21 '24 at 10:55
If you (like me) are using Ubuntu 20.04 server 64 bit, the file to edit is:
/boot/firmware/syscfg.txt
By adding the line:
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
In order to deactivate the LED permanently
On Ubuntu 22.04 server-lts it is the:
/boot/firmware/config.txt
# Disable Power LED (Red)
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
Disable Activity LED (Green)
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
Disable ethernet RJ45 cable LEDs
dtparam=eth_led0=4
dtparam=eth_led1=4
With my Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and a fresh install of Raspberry Pi OS 2023-02-21 (Bullseye ARM64), Seamus' answer works, however, after updating the operating system, these paths have now changed and one must use:
echo none | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/PWR/trigger
My first post here but maybe this will help someone else.
I have had a bash alias commands to turn the light on my pi 4 on or off for a while.
Apparently, they changed the directory, and my bash alias commands of the past no longer worked on the latest version of pi buster / debain 11. It was not just a matter of changing the directory of where the bash alias command was pointed. I need an entirely new bash alias to turn the light on or off.
With the help of this post, I was able to make new bash alias commands to turn the light on my pi 4 on or off.
alias lightsoff='echo none | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/PWR/trigger'
alias lightson='echo default-on | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/PWR/trigger'
I hope this can help someone else trying to accomplish turning the lights on and off on their pi 4 with buster / debain 11
[pi4 /boot/firmware/syscfg.txt]
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
dtparam=eth_led0=4
dtparam=eth_led1=4
noneanddefault-on) documented? – Seamus Jun 11 '21 at 05:59@reboot echo none > /sys/class/leds/led1/triggerin root's crontab. – Greg Chabala Mar 12 '22 at 20:24