[onerng talk] Blinking LED

[Paul Campbell]

On Sat, 27 Jun 2015 00:30:32 bashrc wrote:
> I'm seeing the blinking behaviour on all five of the devices I have.
> Sometimes it's a regular pattern every couple of seconds, but mostly it's
> an irregular pattern.

The light indicates 2 things:
- if it's on solid the internal entropy pool is full, if it's off the pool is 
not completely full (or empty)
- if it flashes at a 1 or 2 second interval it means that the avalanche diode 
is generating solid 0s or 1s rather than good noise

if you are seeing it dimming then getting bright again (not going completely 
solid black for appreciable periods of time) - that's normal - that's just 
normal traffic accessing /dev/[u]random draining and filling the internal 
entropy pool. It is possible to drive the LED to black if you suck data fast 
enough from the device, but I haven't seen it done from /dev/random.

Again - if it turns out that it's a heat related issue we'll exchange the 
parts (in fact we'll exchange the parts for a fixed part for anyone who wants 
one, you don't have to show a failure)

	Paul