4

I successfully turned off all my LEDs on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ according to this guide, by adding these lines in the /boot/config.txt:

[all]
# Turn off Power LED
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
# Turn off Activity LED
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
# Turn off Ethernet ACT LED
dtparam=eth_led0=14
# Turn off Ethernet LNK LED
dtparam=eth_led1=14

I then rebooted and all the LEDs were off as desired.

However I've now updated all my packages with apt update and upgrade which also upgraded the kernal after a reboot. The newly updated kernal is 5.15.56-v7+ #1575

Since this update of my system and kernel, the power (red) LED on my Pi remains on even though it was turned off before the upgrade.

I've even tried additional reboots but the red power led remains on.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

Greenonline
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SneakyShrike
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5 Answers5

3

Yes - I seem to recall that the firmware controlling the Power (red) LED is prone to change. Perhaps the bug report will get this fixed eventually, or perhaps it won't?

In either case, the sysfs interface still works, even though it's been deprecated for over 2 years. Here's a couple of ways to turn off the power (red) LED:

1. Turn Power LED OFF at boot time using cron:

Because root privileges are needed to write to sysfs, you should use the root crontab:

$ sudo crontab -e
# root's crontab opens for editing in your default text editor...
# add the following line:

@reboot /usr/bin/echo '1' > /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness


save, exit the editor & reboot your system to verify

Note that this is easily extended to turn the LED ON & OFF at specified times; e.g. ON during the day, OFF at night.

2. Turn Power LED OFF (or ON) from the command line:

You can use the same command used in the root crontab, but you'll first need to su to root. If you prefere to use sudo instead, you can use the tee command instead of the redirect ( > ) to accomplish this:

$ echo '1' | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness  # OFF

If you wish to turn the Power LED ON:

$ echo '0' | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness  # ON

If you wish to read the status of the Power LED:

$ cat /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness

Which can be used in a script to check and/or change the Power LED state:

$ if [ $(cat /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness) == '0' ]; then echo "ON"; else echo "OFF"; fi;

3. Use the revised device tree configuration to extinguish the Power LED:

Some interim(?) responses to the Aug 21 bug report suggest that a revised dtparam configuration will extinguish the Power LED on the following newer models:

  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
  • Raspberry Pi 400
  • Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

For these models, the revised dtparam configuration to extinguish the Power LED is:

dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=default-on
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
Seamus
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1

This is already fixed. As per a comment in the bug report that Seamus shared in his answer, you have to remove:

dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none

Summarizing, you only need the following to turn the power and activity LEDs off (tested in an updated Raspberry Pi 4):

# Disable the PWR LED
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
# Disable the Activity LED
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
bustawin
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0

I have the same problem after updating. As a workaround for now I'm just using:

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/led1/brightness
Greenonline
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urquelle
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0

Pi 3 Model B bullseye - actually /sys... location changed. To turn off:

echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/PWR/brightness

or put this in your root crontab:

@reboot echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/PWR/brightness
rshev
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0

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

There is currently a different way to achieve this on different pi models. You may want to add model filters to config file as followingly:

#Disable Power LED (Red)
[pi3]
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
[pi3+]
[pi4]
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=default-on
[all]
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off

#Disable Activity LED (Green)
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off

sudo reboot

MCFreddie777
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