laptop lcd brightness in fluxbox

chimpsky · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 109

I'm looking for a way to change the brightness of my laptop's lcd monitor. I used to use kde and there was a control in there, but I'm now using fluxbox and was wondering if this is possible, so I can save some battery life.
speaking of battery life, know of a way to display the current battery life in fluxbox?

Thanks!

hw-tph · Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 4:59 pm Post subject:

There are several ACPI and APM monitors (for battery status) in the appearance of Windowmaker dockapps. In Fluxbox, wm dockapps will appear in the slit. Here's an old screenshot of mine with a screwed Fluxbox theme but the slit sits nicely in my lower left corner with four dockapps running. You can find dockapps at dockapps.org, and the most popular ones are in portage as well.

As for LCD brightness, I use the keys provided on my laptop to change that so I can't help you.

Håkan

chimpsky · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 109

I was able to find a gdesklet display called battery (its currently not working but Im sure I can get it working).
I have a sony vaio v505 laptop, in windows you press the (special)function key and then the F5 key and toggle brightness with the arrows. When I press FnF5 nothing happens. I know that something must be working with the Fn key because it is required to PgUp and I can PgUp. I don't think FnF5 worked in kde either though. Anyone know whats going on? or of a software solution to dim the lcd?
Thanks

chimpsky · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 109

I've been looking for a solution for a while now but havent really found anything yet. Does anyone know of a way with in /proc to echo in settings to change the lcd brightness? or even a way with in Xwindows for that matter.

aLEczapKA · Apprentice Joined: 13 Jun 2003 Posts: 192

There is a tool called sonypid. I can use it with my Vaio F403, probably will work your model as well.

chimpsky · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 109

I tried that and it didnt seem to do anything, I even added some stuff to the kernel argument in grub that sonypid's homepage suggested. I have noticed though that the Fn keys work fine with paging up/paging down/home/end/etc they only dont work when its in combination with one of the F keys (ie FnF4 to controll volume). So I just assume there is some kind of issue with sonypid and the v505 series. But I still believe it is possible to change the brightness of the lcd because I was able to in kde within one of kde's acpi programs. This is why I am wondering if there is another way to approach this without using sony's Fn key.

aLEczapKA · Apprentice Joined: 13 Jun 2003 Posts: 192

You need to put something like this in your fluxbox menu:

Mod4 V :ExecCommand spicctrl -b 0
Mod4 F :ExecCommand spicctrl -b 255

The best if you'd create a bash script which would decrease/increase brightness by some step, eg. 10 values.

How to define shortcuts in you can read here:
http://www.fluxbox.org/docbook/en/html/c289.html
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suburbanizedgeek · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Posts: 48

i use xgamma, to adjust my brightness. i use a CRT, so i don't know if it will work with LCD.
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