Raspberry Pi Status LEDs Explained #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

RasPiStatusLEDs

Very, very handy guide to the RasPi status LEDs, from RaspberryPi Spy:

All Raspberry Pi boards have status LEDs positioned in one corner next to the 3.5mm audio jack and USB port(s).

The Model B has five status LEDs whereas the Model A has two. The Model A has PCB labels for all the LEDs but the three network related LEDs are not populated.

The [above] photo shows the five status LEDs on a Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2.0 board (Note the mounting hole not present on the original Model B Rev 1.0 devices).

Revision 1.0 Boards (Model B) labels are :

  • OK
  • PWR
  • FDX
  • LINK
  • 10M

Revision 2.0 Board (Model A & Model B) labels are :

  • ACT
  • PWR
  • FDX
  • LNK
  • 100

The LEDs have the following meanings :

  • ACT – D5 (Green) – SD Card Access
  • PWR – D6 (Red) – 3.3 V Power is present
  • FDX – D7 (Green) – Full Duplex (LAN) connected
  • LNK – D8(Green) – Link/Activity (LAN)
  • 100 – D9(Yellow) – 100Mbit (LAN) connected

Read more.


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3 Comments

  1. Useful info! Is it possible to customise their function, or populate the empty pads on the Model A and use them for something else?

  2. @Kieran The short answer is no, with the possible exception of the ACT LED, which could probably be customized with some low-level driver changes.

    The longer answer is that the power LED is directly connected to the power supply rail (schematic page 4, E2), and the FDX, 100 and LNK LEDs are directly connected to the USB/Ethernet chip which will control them using hardware (schematic page 3, G6). The ACT LED goes to a GPIO pin on the SoC, which means its purpose is set by software (schematic page 2, B5).

  3. Cheers Sam, I’d come to a similar conclusion, GPIO 16 (Act LED) doesn’t seem to be modifiable from within the OS sadly. Ah well, just a thought!

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