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can it be done?
the problem starts when trying to use "destinator" (a navigationg software) at night, and having it nightblind you into an accident...heh
the screen is just to bright at night and i am too lasy to dim it ....lol
besides, it would be so much cooler that the time based auto dimmers ....
if someone cares to take it as a project, PLEASE!, here are some notes in no particular order ...
1. several dimming levels to select (both for day time and night time, maybe sliders)
2. taskbar icon for easy on/off switching
3. screen "undimming" on key press option (only as an option, not a must)
4. auto load with windows, and resident in memory (obviously)
5. program's definitions must override the windows' brightness definitions ! (only if the program isn't turned off )
thanks !
p.s.
if something like this already exists, please ho pretty please let me know !
Look for Phone Alarm. It has options on dimming the backlight depending on which setting you have it. You can confugure what time the settings take effect. So basically, the items you were requesting can all be done using Phone Alarm: http://www.pocketmax.net/phoneAlarm.html
I think he wants it to do it depending on the light levels, using the universal's keyboard's light sensor, NOT on timing...
Midget_1990 said:
I think he wants it to do it depending on the light levels, using the universal's keyboard's light sensor, NOT on timing...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If this is the case, then this would even be better. Hope someone can figure it out.
Have you ever been alone in the dark with only your cherished Diamond wishing you had a better light source than its dark theme can provide? It certainly happened to me, and here is the solution: Flashlight.
Why a new such program when a few freeware already exist? Well, this one is TOTALLY finger friendly.
While in the main screen, drag your finger upwards to increase the light or downwards to decrease it.
The program can also be used as an emergency beacon, flashing two colors. To set the colors, again move your finger (horizontally this time) on the red, green or blue markers. The settings are saved on exit.
Compact Framework 3.5 needed!
Update 24/08/08 v 1.1
Added SOS function. This uses Color1 from Options.
Update 29/08/08 v 1.2:
Added menu item to disable Auto backlight. This allows to get maximum luminosity. The program will remeber the setting. When exiting, it will restore your backlight to what it was before.
To use this facility with the best results, do the following:
Start -> Settings -> System -> Power -> Backlight
Uncheck Auto adjust backlight
Slide both cursors to maximum
Check Auto adjust backight
Now start flashlight, go to Options, click on Auto backlight (to uncheck it) and your device shoud have maximum light. Don't worry, it will go back to Auto when you leave the program (or whatever setting you had before you ran it).
Looks very nice and convenient especially for users who don't have flash on their devices; downloading now.
I needed this thanks!
does your tool set the backlight to the maximum or just fill the screen with a color?
Haha, very nice/funny app. Ive never used a cellphone as a flashlight. But hey, im gonna install this one. I like it
ageye said:
does your tool set the backlight to the maximum or just fill the screen with a color?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just fills the screen. Quite honestly, I don't know how to change the backlight, but if you have any pointers I'll try.
Really useful for me
Would it be possible to use vertical dragging to change the flashing speed ?
Timbermill said:
Really useful for me
Would it be possible to use vertical dragging to change the flashing speed ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting idea. I can do that...
You need to find a way to disable the light sensor and adjust to the max brightness for this to work efficiently.
why i can not have white light without flashing? if i disable flashing i get a grey light
flashing OK, i choose red and white
KukurikU said:
why i can not have white light without flashing? if i disable flashing i get a grey light
flashing OK, i choose red and white
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to slide your finger upwards...
Can you make it flash SOS it could be usefull in an emergency...
I think it is 3 short 3 long 3 short flashes...
There is also another flashlight app. It called 'pLamp'. Version 1.5 is compatible with VGA. Google for it. It's freeware. Works great on my diamond.
aydc said:
You need to find a way to disable the light sensor and adjust to the max brightness for this to work efficiently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I realize that. Changing the backlight is not API implemented though as it is hardware dependent. I've been googling it for a couple of hours already and no luck yet.
so use registry?
to disable the light sensor
HKCU\ControlPanel\Backlight\LightDetectOn
set it to 0->Sensor is off (will change immediatly)
this should make it ways brighter
don't know which key adjusts the brightness level but you may set Battery-Brightness-level to max and enable Lightsensor. So if you now disable it, you have max brightness
works well for me, jsut implement it in your app and i'll be very happy
Update to v 1.1: added SOS function. Download in first post.
kikakeule said:
so use registry?
to disable the light sensor
HKCU\ControlPanel\Backlight\LightDetectOn
set it to 0->Sensor is off (will change immediatly)
this should make it ways brighter
don't know which key adjusts the brightness level but you may set Battery-Brightness-level to max and enable Lightsensor. So if you now disable it, you have max brightness
works well for me, jsut implement it in your app and i'll be very happy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem with changing the registry is that it won't update the brightness until a soft reset, unless I'm mistaken.
yes yes yes turn backlight for max is more usefull then plenty of colours, btw 9 basic colours will be enough and still finger friendly... but still nice app
pedmond said:
Try to slide your finger upwards...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
multzumesc! thank you..it's all in the finger...lol
pedmond said:
The problem with changing the registry is that it won't update the brightness until a soft reset, unless I'm mistaken.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just try it yourself
after changing the key the sensor will be deactivated immediatly
no soft reset needed
and with the workaround I posted early you will get max brightness very easyly
but even without the workaround this will increase brightness massivly as the main usability of a flashlight is to enlightend darkness and the sensor dimms the display to minimum in darkness^^
Hi All,
Xperia's hardware keyboard is very good, and the backlight is really of help when the ambient goes dark or even darker.
The HW keyboard is also quite cool in the daylight, the buttons' surface letters are very clear and crisp.
But here we have, an especial feature: needless automatic backlight, in spite of bright (or not so) day light? The letters become blurry not to say hardly visible. Not to mention this is wasting battery, too.
Is there a way to turn off the HW keyboard backlight, when it's not needed?
XDA gurus, help our batteries live longer and us users type faster! Please...
I hear you!
Yeah i've noticed the same problem, so ive started making a program to set the brightness etc, ive interrogated the registry for the backlight and have a small app working now whare all the brighness levels and timmings etc can be modified.
I was going to add a menu on the progam to changes the settings based on time of day / profile used on the phone, the rogram would need to be ran in the backgroud all the time but im sure it would not drain the battery much to do this as its a lightweight process that will wait for the profile to change.
I can put up what ive done, its very simple and you can suggest improvments / whatever.
Main functions would be:
allow user to change settings based on their currently selected sound profile (on, vibrate, off) and they have individual settings.
Allow the user to change all backlight related values (I have 11 of them editable in my program currently.
I would like this to have the keyboard light off during the day really as the keyboard light coming on makes it hard to see keys during the day.
awshanks said:
Yeah i've noticed the same problem, so ive started making a program to set the brightness etc, ive interrogated the registry for the backlight and have a small app working now whare all the brighness levels and timmings etc can be modified.
I was going to add a menu on the progam to changes the settings based on time of day / profile used on the phone, the rogram would need to be ran in the backgroud all the time but im sure it would not drain the battery much to do this as its a lightweight process that will wait for the profile to change.
I can put up what ive done, its very simple and you can suggest improvments / whatever.
Main functions would be:
allow user to change settings based on their currently selected sound profile (on, vibrate, off) and they have individual settings.
Allow the user to change all backlight related values (I have 11 of them editable in my program currently.
I would like this to have the keyboard light off during the day really as the keyboard light coming on makes it hard to see keys during the day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds promising! Can you post your app? I would like to try it out.
Here you go...
It just modifies timers and sensors on/off at the minute, but its a start. I made it to give better control over the backlight for myself, happy to help others!
Thanks Andrew! Longlive Ireland!
awshanks said:
It just modifies timers and sensors on/off at the minute, but its a start. I made it to give better control over the backlight for myself, happy to help others!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, bud!
So Features
What do you want it to do?
look better? YES , lol!
i was going to use tab screen to seperate out the info, there are some more values to add that can be changed, i need to group them together (eg ac and battery ones) and have a proper explanation on them (input value limit etc.)
So let me know what are the features you would like (in order of priority) and i will get cracking, lets see if we can make a good little app here.
By now I only wanted the app to turn off keyboard completely. Hope the author will succeed in that. Though I'm afraid the HW keyboard backlight settings are hardware related issue solely, nothing to do with registry/driver routine.
All the other settings are quite handy to play with the backlight of the device. Perhaps a bit more detailed instructions and explanations will be just fine.
Yet the 'About' and 'Copyright' options, maybe some easter eggs - without it the prog is a no-go
Have you tried adding the key HKCU\Software\SonyEricsson\Illumination\QWERTYBrightness ? I found this one when digging into the illumination application.
This will override the automatic brightness values for the keyboard, setting it to a fixed brightness when the light sensor turns it on.
I've set mine to 50, which works fine even if the light goes on at daylight.
Thanks bro, this is very useful hint!
I noticed also, that with '50' (it's not 'key' actually, but a 'value', I input this as a REG_SZ value), light sensor works with HW keyboard much better, more adequate - no backlight when in sunlight or electric lamps at home or in office, slightly dimmer backlight when in the dark. That must save battery life too!
on8a said:
Have you tried adding the key HKCU\Software\SonyEricsson\Illumination\QWERTYBrightness ? I found this one when digging into the illumination application.
This will override the automatic brightness values for the keyboard, setting it to a fixed brightness when the light sensor turns it on.
I've set mine to 50, which works fine even if the light goes on at daylight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Odeon said:
Thanks bro, this is very useful hint!
I noticed also, that with '50' (it's not 'key' actually, but a 'value', I input this as a REG_SZ value), light sensor works with HW keyboard much better, more adequate - no backlight when in sunlight or electric lamps at home or in office, slightly dimmer backlight when in the dark. That must save battery life too!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's may seems silly but i cant find "HKCU\Software\SonyEricsson\Illumination\QWERTYBrightness"
I found only patters and default....
Could please help?
you shall create this parameter if it isn't available.
Odeon said:
you shall create this parameter if it isn't available.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did and it worked! thanks
But still, isnt there anyway to turn it off?
I am finding the screen difficult to read outdoors. Checking time when on my walk, selecting playlists etc. I realise this is the characteristic of the screen technology rather than a phone fault - I have the same problem with the screen on my DSLR camera.
Two questions -
Is there a registry tweak to increase the actual maximum brightness beyond the maximum in Settings? Battery life is of secondary importance for me.
I have read posts discussing G-light and Lumos to improve auto adjustment. I don't think any of these would help me. I would prefer a quickly accessible manual swith with two positions - Indoors, Outdoors.
Has anybody seen anything like this?
Joe
hi
got ur setting>system>power ie click on the battery icon inside that un chek the auto adjust back light and set it as per ur liking
jfranek said:
I am finding the screen difficult to read outdoors. Checking time when on my walk, selecting playlists etc. I realise this is the characteristic of the screen technology rather than a phone fault - I have the same problem with the screen on my DSLR camera.
Two questions -
Is there a registry tweak to increase the actual maximum brightness beyond the maximum in Settings? Battery life is of secondary importance for me.
I have read posts discussing G-light and Lumos to improve auto adjustment. I don't think any of these would help me. I would prefer a quickly accessible manual swith with two positions - Indoors, Outdoors.
Has anybody seen anything like this?
Joe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know where/how to adjust the backlight brightness.
My question was if I can tweak the registry to increase the screen brightness even further when the slider is on full bright setting.
Because the auto adjustment is not working for me, and adjusting the brightness through the menus involves six clicks (taps), I would like to have a widget??? to do it with one tap. An icon which will alternate between 'indoor' and 'outdoor' presets everytime it is tapped.
Joe
jfranek said:
I know where/how to adjust the backlight brightness. My question was if I can tweak the registry to increase the screen brightness even further when the slider is on full bright setting.
(...)
Joe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have never heard/read about such an option, therefore: No, AFAIK.
Thanks, my hopes were not very high for this, but no harm in asking.
Joe
One minor niggle about the HD2 is that, while the auto backlight control is fairly good, instead of going from 10% to 100% depending on conditions, it won't go above 80% (I don't think) and certainly won't go below 30%, which is a bit too bright for artificial light, and much too bright for use in darkness.
So, as a quick work-around, I've added a start-menu short-cut to Windows\powerexe.exe - this lets me switch between auto and manual backlight fairly quickly. But it's still one more click than I think should be necessary: you launch powerexe, then have to click the "backlight" button. There must be a way of jumping straight into the backlight screen, because if you go manila settings/sound and display/backlight it jumps you straight there. Can I do that from a short-cut?
(bump)
Anyone?
I think the idea if flawed from the start, as a crucial aspect to battery life like backlight optimization cannot be so hard to adjust, and so "blind" as to limit the variation span between two values so far from the extremes.
In my experience the minimum is 40%, as putting my finger in front of the light sensor (which should be the one near the proximity sensor), I notice no decrease in light intensity when compared to manually setting value to 40%.
Also, the fact that we are forced to change the backlight in steps of 10% is simply silly. On my Ipaq I could fine-tune it as much as I needed, and actually my current manual setting of 20% is brighter than I'd like, but 10% is really too dark.
Also, what's the matter with the fact of being unable to completely set the light almost to off? If reading an ebook with white text on black background, a 5% value could be virtually enough.
Just found this during my crawling sessions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=450318
I was thinking of trying g-light, but haven't got round to it yet
http://www.ageye.de/index.php?s=glight/about
I've been using Lumos, Theemed has posted the link.
It's good and very configurable.
Apparently G-Light desn't work (well it does, but the interface is extremely slow, it will only respond to a click every 5 seconds or so, making it a nightmare to configure). Let's try Lumos.
While I appreciate all the alternative suggestions, I would still quite like an answer to my original question.
Well, it seems nobody has the answer to whether powerexe can be launched directly to the backlight page...
However in your first post you were complaining about how auto backlight was operating, and it turns out that Lumos does exactly what you'd want. You can set the min and max backlight level, and even tweak the light sensor reading vs BL level curve if you want to.
So isn't that even better?
Personally I was happy with the default auto backlight, but was also looking for a way to easily force it to full power for watching photos or videos. I was also launching powerexe with a shortcut to do it, hence my interest in the thread... Lumos lets you set "exceptions", so I simply set that Coreplayer, Resco photo viewer and HTC album force baclkight to 10. I don't even have to do anything anymore now, all automatic
@shasarak
I know how you feel That's how I felt when I needed to somehow obtain cut/copy/paste functions using the standard htc keyboard, and everyone insisted I chose another keyboard, and at last someone pointed me to the "text edit" function on startbutton-hold found in Quickmenu. Maybe inelegant workaround, but now I can do what I need without changing keyboard, a satisfying compromise.
So well, I discovered Lumos during the same session I noticed your thread, and now that I've been using it since last time, I can say it's definitely effective!
my969 said:
I've been using Lumos, Theemed has posted the link.
It's good and very configurable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My experience with Lumos was it will cause problem to the G-Sensor. Try play Teeter or Resco Bubble, in Resco Bubble the G-Sensor will stop response every few seconds. Anyone having the same error? Haven't try this on the 1.66 ROM though.
Teeter works fine here, on 1.66.
kilrah said:
Teeter works fine here, on 1.66.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi kilrah, can you try out Caver ageye.de/index.php?s=download, I tested on 1.66 ROM problem persist. Teeter playable, but not very responsive to the action. Many Thanks.
Yep, confirmed that caver will lock about 500ms at every sensor read from Lumos. I've reported it in the Lumos thread.
OK, seems a solution is to add the programs that cause trouble as exceptions in Lumos, as it then stops reading the light sensor. Works fine indeed.
Has anyone tried this? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=582059
kilrah said:
Yep, confirmed that caver will lock about 500ms at every sensor read from Lumos. I've reported it in the Lumos thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem also with g-invaders.
Sometimes tho, g-invaders hiccups at the beginning and after some time it works smooth
No problem with teeter as well, even if it seemed for a while that the gsensor woud lean towards the left side. Recalibrated and apparently no more problems.
Shasarak said:
Has anyone tried this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one of the first I found, but then I went straight to Lumos as it was so completely better
Shasarak said:
One minor niggle about the HD2 is that, while the auto backlight control is fairly good, instead of going from 10% to 100% depending on conditions, it won't go above 80% (I don't think) and certainly won't go below 30%, which is a bit too bright for artificial light, and much too bright for use in darkness.
So, as a quick work-around, I've added a start-menu short-cut to Windows\powerexe.exe - this lets me switch between auto and manual backlight fairly quickly. But it's still one more click than I think should be necessary: you launch powerexe, then have to click the "backlight" button. There must be a way of jumping straight into the backlight screen, because if you go manila settings/sound and display/backlight it jumps you straight there. Can I do that from a short-cut?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its simple: make shortcut on ["\Windows\powerexe.exe" 2]
karelia-molot said:
Its simple: make shortcut on ["\Windows\powerexe.exe" 2]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hooray!!! Finally someone actually answers my question! Thanks!