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Looking for a simple brightness managment app

All I want is an application that can switch between Auto Brightness to Minimum setting (OS specified or lower) at specific time, time when it gets dark. or maybe it can choose the time automatically based on dusk and dawn.
I noticed that Auto setting NEVER drops to minimal setting for some reason......

kolyan said:
All I want is an application that can switch between Auto Brightness to Minimum setting (OS specified or lower) at specific time, time when it gets dark. or maybe it can choose the time automatically based on dusk and dawn.
I noticed that Auto setting NEVER drops to minimal setting for some reason......
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There is an app called Timeriffic (I think that's how it's spelled). You just input the settings into the app and at that predetermined time, it will adjust settings (including brightness, not sure about auto brightness).
I have it set so that at a certain time (when I leave the house) it will turn off the wifi, turn on vibrate, etc...
But if you fall out of your routine, you kind of go bonkers because you forget that you have timeriffic set and can't figure out why the wifi turned off, etc... LoL!

How about just using Power Widget when to switch between auto/minimal when you realize the screen is too bright?

Thanks. Timeriffic gets the job done, but i wish it would support auto brightness. using power widget doesnt work for me because if i forget to switch back to auto setting, in sunny day i cant even see the screen at all and have to find shaded area just to switch back

kolyan said:
Thanks. Timeriffic gets the job done, but i wish it would support auto brightness. using power widget doesnt work for me because if i forget to switch back to auto setting, in sunny day i cant even see the screen at all and have to find shaded area just to switch back
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Click to collapse
Yeah I've had to learn where certain objects are on my home screen.
*Unlock* *Swipe right* *press top right of phone*
Haptic feedback is my friend
It's a shame, OLEDs are so much better than TFT screens for battery conservation but they suck in the light, you know, outside, the one place you are most likely to use your MOBILE phone. Ah well, it performs almost as well as the iPhone when the N1's on full brightness. I held it next to my friend's 3GS, but thinking about it forgot to check what brightness hers was on... DOH.
I think they've corrected it now though, with newer designs.

There is also an app that is called auto bright and it can be made into a homescreen shortcut and is basically a macro that turns on autobright. I put it next to my power control widget so in the case where I need to switch brightness manually I can easily switch back. FYI Froyo's power widget has added the autobright setting so soon as a stable version of Froyo comes out this will be a mute point.
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Setting Profiles does the same as well, and a whole lot more.

App I use is called, dimmer. It has to manually be switch.

jimtc said:
There is also an app that is called auto bright and it can be made into a homescreen shortcut and is basically a macro that turns on autobright. I put it next to my power control widget so in the case where I need to switch brightness manually I can easily switch back. FYI Froyo's power widget has added the autobright setting so soon as a stable version of Froyo comes out this will be a mute point.
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Click to collapse
OP pointed out (correctly) the Automatic Brightness setting will never automatically set the brightness to the minimum point (that is, as low as you could set it manually). I can confirm that, though Froyo does include the Automatic option on the power control widget, it still won't go all the way dim. It seems rather silly that the Automatic range doesn't go all the way down.
Also, the word you're after is "moot", not mute.

codesplice said:
OP pointed out (correctly) the Automatic Brightness setting will never automatically set the brightness to the minimum point (that is, as low as you could set it manually). I can confirm that, though Froyo does include the Automatic option on the power control widget, it still won't go all the way dim. It seems rather silly that the Automatic range doesn't go all the way down.
Also, the word you're after is "moot", not mute.
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yes. thats correct. if auto setting would go all the way down, then i would not need any 3rd party software to begin with. i really wish we could adjust the range and sensitivity of the sensor
ps. developer of Timeriffic said that its not possible to add Auto Brightness setting to his app because there is no API for that and the only way around is to hack it.

[Q] Auto-brightness

Anyone else's auto-brightness not working? Mine doesn't

how?
How do you know? Or what have you noticed?
Rio

I don't think that mine works either, one of the first things I noticed.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

rio911 said:
How do you know? Or what have you noticed?
Rio
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Click to collapse
Well it never seems to change. To confirm I put it on the lowest and then on auto, it stayed on the lowest. I then tried putting it on the highest setting and then putting it on auto but again it stayed the same.
Surprised it took me so long to realise..

It takes an average reading of the light it senses over about 30-45 seconds when it's on auto and responds accordingly on mine. To check yours put a torch on over the sensor for about 30 secs and if nothing changes yours definitely isnt working properly. However I normally have it set to a manual amount instead of auto to save on battery etc.
Edit: Just tested again with a torch and this time it took 45 seconds to change... odd.

Where is the sensor located? Does it use the front camera?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

brachiopod said:
Where is the sensor located? Does it use the front camera?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
It's the thing just over an inch to the left of the front camera.

I see it now. I put a bright LED flashlight over it while in a darkened room for a couple minutes and the screen did not change brightness. However, it does appear to have an IR filter over it, so maybe it is mostly sensitive
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Oops not used to the kb, sensitive to Sunlight.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

With it on full brightness (before changing to auto) I had my finger over it for a while but it didn't change. Then I left it on full brightness for about 10 minutes in a fairly dim room and no change either.

Just tried with an led torch here as well and it did sod all this time. Nothing changed. Try with another light source if you get the chance. The update rate on the auto setting is too slow really tbh. There are loads of apps in the market to test the sensors too btw.
@Case0
If it's not on auto mode it wont change at all.

Possibly it only checks at certain times, such as when an app starts. I bet that it reads IR so only certain light sources might work.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

I installed a couple of sensor tester applications, and none of them can report a value from the sensor. Sensor list 2.1 detects the sensor as a lite-on al3000a ambient light sensor, but no value is returned. Not sure if this means that it is not working, or if these apps just can't read that particular sensor.

It doesn't work for me either, although I haven't tested it since the new firmware upgrade. Maybe we have a bad batch.

I never was a fan from autobrightness. I always set it to middle.
Until I got a Nexus S and noticed how awesome it is that it changes the brightness, since otherwise you can not read the display outside. It also changes instantly.

Try this. Download and install Advanced Task Killer, then Sensor Test by Atmoworker. Kill all processes to make sure the sensor isnt in use by something else. Then run the sensor test. If your value for the light meter doent move, then there's something wrong for sure, or it's in use by some process that wasnt killed by the task killer.

stuntdouble said:
Try this. Download and install Advanced Task Killer, then Sensor Test by Atmoworker. Kill all processes to make sure the sensor isnt in use by something else. Then run the sensor test. If your value for the light meter doent move, then there's something wrong for sure, or it's in use by some process that wasnt killed by the task killer.
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Click to collapse
OK. That app does seem to read the sensor, and it does change. I didn't have to kill any tasks for it to work. It gives three readings labeled 0, 1 and 2.
0 changes from 1.0 to over 100 outside. Probably some log scale. 1 changes from -27 to over 100. 2 sits at a very small number, about 10^-45
So the sensor does work, the tablet just isn't using it properly it appears. Or something.

Ok well yeah sounds like it does work, just doesnt function the way you want it to. There are lots of apps to deal with screen brightness on the market, some free, some not so. And then there are also a few which lets it change using the camera instead of light meter. Here's a link to one to show you what I mean. https://market.android.com/details?id=org.pbxes.light2&feature=search_result I'm sure there are free versions available if you do choose this option. Good luck in finding one you like.

Well, if by "just doesnt function the way you want it to" you mean does not do anything at all ever no matter what, then yeah, it isn't working the way I want it to. Thanks for the tip, I'll see if I can find an app that works.

OK, auto brightness DOES work. I spent some time messing with it to figure it out. The auto routine started working after I did the 10 second power button off on my machine.
1) The level that you set with the slider becomes the minimum level for the brightness under auto. That's also why I didn't think that it was working, I had brightness up all the way.
2) The auto routine will adjust brightness UP within a short period of time, 10-15 seconds, if you move into bright light.
3) The routine will NOT adjust brightness down (you move into dim light) except at three points a) right before the screen saver kicks in (goes blank) or b) right after returning from the screen saver. c) you power cycle the tablet.
This means that it is quick to respond to ambient light and increase brightness, but if you have your screen timeout set long, or you keep using the tablet, the brightness will be very reluctant to adjust down. The brightness will never be adjusted lower than you set with the slider though, but it can go up all the way.

app to increase brightness ?

hi,is there anyway u can up the brightness level on these phones its up full at the moment but still could do with being a bit brighter

Afaik you have to wait for custom roms to get that up'd
Regards Dousan...
e: maybe its enough with a custom kernel...

Well the screen is not that great on our phone which is why we get around 2 days battery life with average use even I would like the screen to be brighter but it will greatly reduce battery life
Sent from my R800i using XDA Premium App

Have you tried installing dazzle? This app has some niffty display controls for maxing out the brightness.
Sent from my R800i using XDA App

it all comes down to the fact SE does not allow us to disable auto brightness so even if you "crank" the brightness you still have to live with auto brightness controlling the brightness while settings 1 2 3 on the power control widget appear to turn it up it is still being controlled to an extent..

FrAsErTaG said:
it all comes down to the fact SE does not allow us to disable auto brightness so even if you "crank" the brightness you still have to live with auto brightness controlling the brightness while settings 1 2 3 on the power control widget appear to turn it up it is still being controlled to an extent..
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Click to collapse
Will probably at least take a recompile of the kernel.
An answer to this question is in the Arc section, from SE:
A question on how to disable auto-brightness on Xperia PLAY.
Unfortunately, being able to do this from userspace might be non-functional in the released kernel for Play. The engineering team is aware and it is something they are looking into for future releases, can’t comment if it will be supported though yet.
However, if you’re building your own kernel, you can modify the file arch/arm/mach-msm/board-semc_zeus.c
What you’re looking for is the structure “as3676_platform_data”, where you can change the “als_connected = 1” to “als_connected = 0”.
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Click to collapse

I'm not sure how this would work, but there is a parameter
in /sys/devices/i2c-0/0-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/als/ "enable" which by default is set to "1"
Might want to test something like
echo "0" > /sys/devices/i2c-0/0-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/als/enable
You need to be root to do this

NielDK said:
I'm not sure how this would work, but there is a parameter
in /sys/devices/i2c-0/0-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/als/ "enable" which by default is set to "1"
Might want to test something like
echo "0" > /sys/devices/i2c-0/0-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/als/enable
You need to be root to do this
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Click to collapse
this works

waz000000 said:
this works
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Click to collapse
I think it will be set back on reboot, but it may work to add that line to /etc/hw_config.sh

yeah doesnt remain after reboot, will add later and see if it works.
It's not something that bothers me tbh.

waz000000 said:
yeah doesnt remain after reboot, will add later and see if it works.
It's not something that bothers me tbh.
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Click to collapse
Nor me.
The auto brightness is actually pretty awesome in all fairness. I am going to leave mine on even when a fix comes out for it.

News for brightnes controll ?

[REQ] CM7 auto brightness customization

CM7 is a great ROM but for me, Sense roms have more advantages on the evo. One of the advantages of CM7 is the ability to completely customize the auto brightness function. When I ran CM7 nightlies I spent about an hour dimming the lights to program it perfectly. When you're in a dark room you don't want to pull your phone out of your pocket and blind everyone around you. When you're out in the sun, you want to be able to actually see the screen. Unfortunately, it seems like the sense auto brightness does a horrible job of getting the phone really dim in the dark and doesn't react quick enough in the sun. There are so many widgets out there for people to quickly adjust their screen brightness because the auto isn't good enough. This is ridiculous! The evo 4G is capable of having the perfect auto-brightness. We shouldn't have to be stumbling to click on a widget to self adjust the brightness.
I've searched all over the interwebs and nothing like this exists for non-CM7 Android devices. Someone please either port the CM7 auto brightness customization settings or create an app!!! Something similar to the old school Lumens app from Windows Mobile. You would be a hero to many.
Also, I would love to do this but I have zero programming skills.

I created an app that does this exactly (it's in beta at the moment):
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.vito.lux
How well it performs depends on how good the light sensor on your device is. The app does have data filtering to try and get better readings from bad sensors, though.

Matteo1219 said:
CM7 is a great ROM but for me, Sense roms have more advantages on the evo. One of the advantages of CM7 is the ability to completely customize the auto brightness function. When I ran CM7 nightlies I spent about an hour dimming the lights to program it perfectly. When you're in a dark room you don't want to pull your phone out of your pocket and blind everyone around you. When you're out in the sun, you want to be able to actually see the screen. Unfortunately, it seems like the sense auto brightness does a horrible job of getting the phone really dim in the dark and doesn't react quick enough in the sun. There are so many widgets out there for people to quickly adjust their screen brightness because the auto isn't good enough. This is ridiculous! The evo 4G is capable of having the perfect auto-brightness. We shouldn't have to be stumbling to click on a widget to self adjust the brightness.
I've searched all over the interwebs and nothing like this exists for non-CM7 Android devices. Someone please either port the CM7 auto brightness customization settings or create an app!!! Something similar to the old school Lumens app from Windows Mobile. You would be a hero to many.
Also, I would love to do this but I have zero programming skills.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just installed CM7.1.0 and haven't yet found all the settings but stumbled upon some good ones already. A brightness one would be great because I would LOVE for my phone to go brighter in direct sunlight and dimmer in controlled areas and in the dark. I want to tweak mine as you described. Is this in the Cyanogenmod settings within the Menu->Settings menu or is it somewhere else?

OstrichSak said:
Just installed CM7.1.0 and haven't yet found all the settings but stumbled upon some good ones already. A brightness one would be great because I would LOVE for my phone to go brighter in direct sunlight and dimmer in controlled areas and in the dark. I want to tweak mine as you described. Is this in the Cyanogenmod settings within the Menu->Settings menu or is it somewhere else?
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Click to collapse
If I remember correctly, it is something like... Menu-> Settings-> Cyanogenmod Settings-> Display
It's in there somewhere!

Matteo1219 said:
If I remember correctly, it is something like... Menu-> Settings-> Cyanogenmod Settings-> Display
It's in there somewhere!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, and look for auto, and 'other' there is awesome control in there. You can even control how bright your capacitive buttons light up, and what level of light they respond to.
Really nice feature.
To the poster who is working on this, I'll def be having a look. Thanks.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium

Touchkey backlight behavior

I've been digging into the "touchkey backlight issue" and would appreciate some help understanding how it worked (or didn't) on GB-based ROMs. If you are running GB (rather than "I remember..."), understanding how the proprietary Samsung code handled the backlight, both in auto- and manual-brightness mode, under a variety of screen timeouts, USB plugged, AC plugged, etc., would be great. Information like this can also help me guess where Samsung has their proprietary code, rather than wading through 150 MB of ROM.
Reports like,
The backlights go out after a couple seconds
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Click to collapse
aren't terribly helpful.
The backlights turn on when I tap the screen anywhere, then turn off after a second or two (it seems to vary from time to time), when I'm running on batttery, with auto-brightness on, and in normal indoor home lighting. They don't turn on with the same settings if I am outside.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
or the like is much more helpful.
(I made that stuff up. I don't remember how they worked under GB.)
Oh, let me know which ROM you are running as well.
No promises, but knowing where we came from can help determine where we might go.
Thanks!
P.S. This is a common problem with Samsung phones -- You'd be amazed at the number of inquiries about the touchkey backlight.

I can check these later again a stock S4G I have still on GB, but on my flashed one with FB's AOKP using your brightness for the screen fixes, this is what I just tested.
-Turn Autobrightness off, screen sleep to 5 mins, brightness about 30%, backlights stay on for the whole 5 mins.
-Turn Autobrightness off, screen sleep to 5 mins, brightness about 100%, backlights stay on for the whole 5 mins.
Turn Autobrightness On, screen sleep to 5 mins, filtered/raw 34/34, backlights stay on for the whole 5 mins.
Turn Autobrightness On, screen sleep to 5 mins, filtered/raw 2000/2000, backlights go out as soon as the raw value hits past 150, your default to turn them off.
When I remove it from a bright light and the raw goes back down to below 50 though, the autobrightness does not dim the screen, I have to put it to sleep and wake it up to get it to actually drop the brightness..
Moving the phone between bright light and dim light, the buttons do go on and off corresponding to the 150, but the screen doesn't dim or go brighter.
If the buttons are off from being in bright light, and I press one, they go on and stay on and moving out and back into bright light, they seem to stay on most of the time.
So it seems your code for the autobrightness can turn the buttons on and off, by the 0 value for the correct RAW value. It's spotty though and the autobrightness doesn't adjust itself to the correct level until I sleep/wakeup again. I can have autobrightness on and move my phone from dark to light and the buttons go on and off by the brightness of the light but the screen doesn't.
I will check this same test against a stock GB and see what happens.

This is for gingerbread:
Sometimes the key lights don't turn on at all while using the keyboard, and even when you are pressing keys in the keyboard. It might not even be caused by the keyboard being out, maybe it's the way I hold my phone while I'm typing that causes the auto brightness to go down.
This doesn't occur all the time though. Also, sometimes it doesn't turn on at all even when touching the screen (maybe for a minute) then they turn back on.
It seems that the key lights have some situations where they decide to ignore touches and stay off, I'm still trying to figure out when this is. Again, it mostly happens when the keyboard is out. Maybe it has something to do with auto brightness. When toggling auto brightness on and off, the key lights immediately turn off and stay off for about 30 seconds. This makes me think that the soft key lights even on stock are buggy

Thanks getochkn; great report for ICS!
That pretty much agrees with what I am seeing on ICS and what I would expect from the code.
The buttons "don't play nice" with the Android world as it seems they turn themselves on when you touch them (probably hardware control), and the present TeamAcid ICS driver turns them on when it (re-)initializes. The Android world won't change the brightness of any of the "lights" if it thinks that the level is already set. For example, if it thinks the buttons are off, it won't try to turn them off again. I believe this is why with auto-brightness on the buttons sometimes won't turn off. I'm still wading through PowerManager service to understand how the code is trying to handle them when in "manual" brightness mode.
Definitely looking forward to your results for GB, though pisherthefisher's report that they seem "buggy" on "stock" for him suggests that Samsung might not have gotten it right even there.

Seems to be no way to fully disable them eh? Then we could just use the JB style nav bar like already in FB's AOKP which lets us set color, brightness, custom icon, etc but with the other buttons still working physically, lights on or not, it seems not worth it as you will still hit the sammy buttons, especially if the light is off but the buttons still physically work.

I can "hack" them off, but I'm trying to solve the problem more generally and in a way that keeps the TeamAcid framework able to easily track the CyanogenMod upstream. I might build a "Hefe Kernel Of Darkness" if I can't find something this week.
Posted from my SGS4G, thanks to Team Acid development

Ah. Might be an option, go all softkeys via the ROM instead.
I know OT, but any idea why the autobrightness doesn't seem to fully kick in sometimes either? I can be in the custom screen to view the raw values and see the numbers drop but not the screen brightness until i sleep/wakeup. The backlights will go on/off according to the raw value but not the screen brightness. lol.
Going to go see how my stock one works and I'll report back.

On the auto-brightness not seeming to work, you might want to check the auto-brightness thread in the dev section. I am guessing it might be related to the "Allow light decrease" and "Decrease hysteresis" settings.

jeffsf said:
On the auto-brightness not seeming to work, you might want to check the auto-brightness thread in the dev section. I am guessing it might be related to the "Allow light decrease" and "Decrease hysteresis" settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I forgot the settings after reinstall.
On GB, the lights seem to go out at some value (no custom, can't tell) but do come back on when you press them and then seem to stay on randomly. lol.
FB's AOKP comes with BLN control which does seem to use the lights as an indicator light for lockscreen notifications, so they seem to be able to be controlled from that SW. Not sure if that helps or not?

Hefe kernel of darkness sounds awesome, it would be cool to use the sgs4g like a galaxy nexus

Setting the backlights to 0 on all light settings, the backlights go out, but as soon as you go to sleep, and wake up, the lights come back on and don't go out even though the custom panel shows the state of them at 0. Turning auto-brightness off/on then turns the lights off, so the state is not being restored at wake. Of course touching one of them turns them on and they stay on again unless i toggle off/on again.

Yes, right now driver resume turns on the backlights, but Android thinks they are already off, so it doesn't turn them off based on the auto-brightness settings. Touching the keys is similar, but it seems to be hardware that is turning them on.
Posted from my SGS4G, thanks to Team Acid development

Well I'll test a darkness kernel if you get one going. lol. Use the softkey feature in AOKP. I've already been playing with and have it setup, I just don't want to hit the sammy buttons which I brush sometimes by accident, nor have the lights come back on after wake up, so if can disable them fully in the kernel, that would be cool.

Hefe Kernel Of Darkness in Post #2 of the Hefe Kernel thread

jeffsf said:
Hefe Kernel Of Darkness in Post #2 of the Hefe Kernel thread
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no wifi. lol. Doesn't even turn on.

Yeah, something is flaky. I'll look at it again tonight.
Posted from my SGS4G, thanks to Team Acid development

jeffsf said:
Yeah, something is flaky. I'll look at it again tonight.
Posted from my SGS4G, thanks to Team Acid development
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Works good other than that.

Can the lights be disabled with the keys functional?
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda app-developers app

m4127440 said:
Can the lights be disabled with the keys functional?
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best we can do right is only have them turned on while pressed with the hefe kernel of darkness. Check out the hefe kernel thread in the development section, second post
Sent from my SGH-T959V using xda app-developers app

We?