Turn off leds of Raspberry Pi

Question

I would like to turn off the leds of my Raspberry Pi.

I tried modifying the file echo none >/sys/class/leds/led0/trigger but nothing changed.

Is this possible?

You can disable the red power led, if thats what you mean? See here: http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/05/how-to-disable-the-red-led-on-the-pi-camera-module/ — , Nov 21 '14 at 11:47

score 27 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 02 '16 at 18:51

27

RaspberryMediaCenter:/sys/class/leds # echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led1/brightness
RaspberryMediaCenter:/sys/class/leds # echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness

led0 green one

led1 red one

edited Feb 02 '16 at 18:51

pfnuesel

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answered Feb 02 '16 at 18:24

Salvo Neutron

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score 26 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 08 '13 at 16:33

26

According to the RaspberryPi forums:

echo 1 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness #Turn on
echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness #Turn off

Though I think some kernel hacking may be involved to control all of them, I believe this only works with the OK LED.

answered Nov 08 '13 at 16:33

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yes, I just checked, this does not turn off all LEDs. poo – Catherine Holloway Apr 09 '14 at 17:05
Pi 3B+. This didn't affect the disk activity light (red aka led1) in the other answer that did work by Salvo Neutron. – Ari Oct 16 '20 at 17:21

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

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Depending on which LED you are talking about, it looks like it is not possible.

For more information, read How can I turn the lights off on my pi? (and that's also a good place to ask RPi questions)

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

Community

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answered Nov 08 '13 at 16:26

Ben Voigt

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 08 '15 at 18:32

On the Pi you can control the 2 Leds (red and green) by editing the files located under:

/sys/class/leds/led[num]

For example to turn off the usual blinking of the green led when the Pi is accessing the sd card, you can run (as admin):

echo none > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger

And to turn on or off one led, you can change the status of the brightness file (as admin):

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness     # turn on
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness     # turn off

This is my very inelegant workaround in Python to actually control the status:

import time
import os

# turn off the default trigger of the green LED
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo none > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger\"")

# turn on the green LED
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness\"")

# keep it on 5 seconds
time.sleep(5)

# turn off the green LED on PI
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness\"")

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered May 11 '16 at 00:43

I realize that this is an old question. But, it was the first in the Google results for me, and it didn't work for my Raspberry Pi2 B+. For anyone else like me finding this now, the techniques at http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/controlling-pwr-act-leds-raspberry-pi did work.

Turn off leds of Raspberry Pi

5 Answers5