disabling the 8812/11.21 wifi bright blue led from hell

bluenote · December 30, 2019 at 7:34 PM

Hey folks

Under raspbian, I successfully turn off the absolutely crazy-making blue LED on my 8811au usb wifi dongle using this driver and the methods given:

GitHub - aircrack-ng/rtl8812au: RTL8812AU/21AU and RTL8814AU driver with monitor mode and frame injection

Under libreelec, those methods don't seem to work. (I have no idea if that specific driver is being used, or maybe filenames aren't what I expect so ...)

However, it seems like past me found a way to do this on my primary libreelec installation. I cannot find any trace of the fix however.

But now I can't recreate the fix on another box I want to use, and, I'm afraid perhaps this will break in the future and I'll be treated to an extremely bright winking blue LED just under the TV. (Please don't tell me tape, this thing lights up the whole dongle in all directions).

Sometimes I feel like I'm the guy in memento with this terrible memory. Anyways, I figure if I solved it once, someone here must know how to?

thanks

EDIT: it does look like libreelec is using the same driver I am because I see the source files in /var/media/root/usr/src/rtl8812au-5.6.4.2

**Da Flex** · December 30, 2019 at 9:17 PM Official Post

I can feel your pain.

I think it's a lot easier to take a ~1.5mm driller, and physically destroy the LED by drilling in.

**mglae** · December 31, 2019 at 2:38 PM

Code

# modinfo 8812au|grep led
parm:           rtw_led_enable:Enable status LED (int)

You can try the module parameter if it is available on your RPI kernel.

bluenote · January 1, 2020 at 12:33 AM

Quote from mglae
Code
# modinfo 8812au|grep led
parm:           rtw_led_enable:Enable status LED (int)
You can try the module parameter if it is available on your RPI kernel.

Thanks, this allowed me to solve my problem. (But oddly, I don't seem to have this method being used on my primary libreelec, but whatever)
For anyone following in the future, this did it:

echo "options 8812au rtw_led_enable=0" > /storage/.config/modprobe.d/8812au.conf