First I just want to say "Hi". Bought an Arduino last week and enjoying playing with it... anyway, my question is this.
Is it possible to turn off the onboard power LED on an Arduino Uno?
And just to be clear I don't mean the LED connected to pin 13, I mean the LED near the reset switch with the word ON next to it.
Many Thanks
Stephen
gatekiller:
First I just want to say "Hi". Bought an Arduino last week and enjoying playing with it... anyway, my question is this.Is it possible to turn off the onboard power LED on an Arduino Uno?
And just to be clear I don't mean the LED connected to pin 13, I mean the LED near the reset switch with the word ON next to it.
Many Thanks
Stephen
No, it is 'hardwired' across the the boards +5vdc power bus and ground. However it does have a 1k ohm series resistor in series with the diode so if you just soldered a short jumper across the two led pins (probably not as easy done as said!) that would keep it from lighting up while not effecting anything else. 5ma of current would still flow through the resistor but that would do no harm.
Lefty
I could achieve the same result with lower tech - a small piece of duct/gaffer tape!
Thanks for the replies 
So why do you want to turn it off?
If it's to get rid of the light then just cover over it.
If it's to minimise power consumption then I'm afraid you are using the wrong board for the job as disconnecting it would work but there are many other things wasting power on the board.
mowcius:
So why do you want to turn it off?If it's to get rid of the light then just cover over it.
If it's to minimise power consumption then I'm afraid you are using the wrong board for the job as disconnecting it would work but there are many other things wasting power on the board.
It was just to stop the light illuminating when the Arduino was being used in a dark environment but the best solution is the simply cover it up. Although perhaps it would be nice if it could be controlled programmatically so, for example, I could turn on the LED during the day and turn it off at night.
After thinking about it, if your Arduino board was going to be used in a final solution, mounting it in an enclosure would be a good idea: it would protect your board and hide the power LED where you could use an externally mounted LED as a power or status indicator.
Cheers
Stephen
If you were going to use it in a final project you'd normally go with a standalone chip on stripboard/protoboard etc, pehaps an Arduino mini or something - the Duemilanove/Uno is best as a prototyping tool.
But yeah you'd also normally have it in a case of some kind.
A hole-punch will take care of your problem.