This is a placeholder topic for “PiicoDev Ambient Light Sensor VEML6030” comments.
The PiicoDev® Ambient Light Sensor is a great solution for sensing ambient light levels. No soldering is required to connect the PiicoDev Ambient Light Sensor to other devices in the PiicoDev family.
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Is it possible to turn off the on-board LED? Looking to deploy this in a project in a media room and would prefer the LED not to be on.
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Hi Phoenix,
Welcome to the forum 
It is possible to disable and re-enable the LED by cutting and re-briding solder pads on the back of the board.
To disable the LED just turn over your module then cut the copper trace using a razor blade between the two pads marked with an arrow in the image below. It’s quite difficult to see because of the solder masking but you can check if you’ve cut the link fully by measuring continuity between the solder pads.
If you later decide you want the LED connected again, just bridge between the two pads with solder.
The pullup resistors and I2C address can be changed using a similar process.
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Hi Trent
Providing the cuttable link was good thinking from Core. Although having a LED (which can be quite bright) almost alongside an Ambient Light Sensor seems a little strange. I would think most people would want to remove its influence.
Cheers Bob
Hi Bob,
There was quite a lot of discussion around the LED lights on the PiicoDev modules, some people suggested it would be nice to have them be software controllable and others thought them unnecessary on some modules.
In the end, the decision was made that having an LED that was hardwired to power by default was invaluable to beginners which is what PiicoDev is all about. Confirming your power supply is working is always step zero to any project.
We make it as easy as possible to remove the LED though because once you know everything is working a lot of the time they are better off removed.
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Hi Trent
I thought that would be the case and it is easily removed. I couldn’t imagine Core putting a LED permanently alongside something that is meant to monitor ambient light.
Cheers Bob
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