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OT : Design versus Function

Anyone else have any examples. Got a basic set-top TV digital box, should have a simple LED on the front showing whether the unit is on or standby. No, it is buried inside to illuminate via plastic the whole control button section as a red or green glow. But in anything other than very subdued room lighting you cannot see whether its on or off and even then you have to view directly , not obliquely. There was a series of Panasonic VCRs that instead of using the usual (up to then) large digit cold cathode glowing displays they had LCD displays no bigger than a wrist watch that you had to go within a foot of the display to read.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Reply to
n cook
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My pet peeve is all the millions of consumer audio & video products in black boxes with black pushbuttons. Especially with the labels in tiny font. Makes for very poor function.

Anyone else have any examples?

Reply to
Jim Land

For those of us (10%) males who are red-green color-blind, the indicator LED's that change from red to amber to green are useless. The three colors all look the same. There are too many products that do this to even start to list them. They drive me crazy as I cannot tell what the indicator light means, And, I am only partially red-green color blind. I love the new LED traffic lights, the bluish green of the green lights is easy for me to distinguish compared to the sickly green that some older lights used to put out.

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

Reply to
hrhofmann

How do you tell 2.2K from 2.2M resistors etc.? Do you have bits of red and green coloured gels/filters so 1/2 resistor band(s) goes lighter and one goes darker when viewed through them

Over the years I've heard this from ordinary people. In the UK the domestic mains flex colours are Brown - Live Blue - Neutral Green/Yellow - Earth One person thought that as the yellow/green one looks like a snake colouring, then that must be the dangerous one so the live.

Then someone else, the most distinctive one even in bad light is the yellow / green one so that must be the live one, the brown one is earth coloured so that must be the earth , leaving the blue which must be the remaining one of neutral.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Reply to
n cook

Yes, they've put the least vivid colour on the live one, and vice versa!

Over here black is live and white is neutral. The opposite of automotive and most other DC electronics, where black is ground and red is live.

Reply to
mc

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