Chosen Solution
I have a CalDigit TS3+ docking station and the power indicator LED light fails to work most of the time–every once and a while, it will flicker to life, and then fail again after a few minutes. I found a teardown online, and when the device is taken apart, there’s a light pipe on the front plate, so I guess the LED is soldered to one of the main boards somewhere. Given that the LED light works occasionally, is it safe to assume that the LED functions fine and that there’s a connection issue somewhere? Any suggestions for diagnosing the problem, or best to just leave it (given that the device works fine otherwise). Just to show where the light is on the box.
A picture of the light tube.
A picture of the place where the light tube goes.
Screen captures of the two boards. The light tube seems to touch the smaller of the two boards, but I don’t see where there would be an LED (full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f6Zs1Jy...).
And here a few pictures from where @flannelist suggests the LED is. The first shows D36:
The second image is just the other side of the board.
So, in the interest of your initial question of locating the LED, I would wager this is your dude. I had a look at the video and it’s hard to tell for sure, but the board silkscreen looks like that part is labelled as D36. That would mean a diode of some kind and it certainly looks like it could be a surface mount LED
As for the issue, could be a poor connection, or a bad LED, but getting the thing apart looks pretty straight forward so I would say it’s at least worth getting the front plate off to have a look.
