Keyboard backlight and light sensor support for BootCamp

[Dmitri]

Hi

I put together a small tray app which lets you control the keyboard backlight from windows system tray, also supporting automatic backlight adjustment based on light sensor input.

Download the latest version of the tool from:
http://dmitri.v.googlepages.com/macbooktraytools

Thanks to enj0y for providing initial apple SMC I/O code in his initial post:
http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=1472

have fun

Dmitri

[rickadair]

The biggest improvement would be to drop the need for giveio. I did this in my original version and it makes the app alot cleaner.

[Dmitri]

Hi,
yes I thought about this, eliminating giveio dependency and eventually making an installer package is on the todo list. Thanks for feedback!
Dmitri

[Dmitri]

Hi Rick,
following your advice, I eliminated the giveio dependency. The app is a single exe now and is very easy to install. Thanks again for pointing this out :)

The new version is available for download at the usual place (see the link in the original post)

Cheers,
Dmitri

[ilkevinli]

This is a great tool. I would really like to see a more reliable light sensor response and automatically adjust screen backlight based on light sensor input added. Keep up the great work.


Hi Rick,
following your advice, I eliminated the giveio dependency. The app is a single exe now and is very easy to install. Thanks again for pointing this out :)

The new version is available for download at the usual place (see the link in the original post)

Cheers,
Dmitri
________
condos in Wong Amat (http://pattayaluxurycondos.com)

[Dmitri]

Thanks!

Regarding sensor response: Can you let me know any details about your experience, how should the sensors behave? Try to play around with light / darkness thresholds in the configuration. Depending on your environment this can make world of a difference. For example in brighter room with the light intensity changing more frequently you can try to use 25 / 50. Larger gap between thresholds ensures the sensor does not overreact when the ambient light intensity is on the verge.

[ilkevinli]

I have been able to get it to a pretty perfect point. The issue I have is that if Im in a dark enviroment and the keyboard light is on, if I go to a webpage that is mostly white, (google), the keyboard light turns off even though I am still in a dark enviorment. Don't really know if there is a way to fix it, but in OSX it doesnt seem to be effected by "bright" backrounds.



Thanks!

Regarding sensor response: Can you let me know any details about your experience, how should the sensors behave? Try to play around with light / darkness thresholds in the configuration. Depending on your environment this can make world of a difference. For example in brighter room with the light intensity changing more frequently you can try to use 25 / 50. Larger gap between thresholds ensures the sensor does not overreact when the ambient light intensity is on the verge.
________
condominiums Pattaya (http://pattayaluxurycondos.com)

[Dmitri]

What values is the ambient light sensor showing when this happens? (See in Configuration dialog of the tray tools.)

The display is a light source which is of course influencing the ambient sensors as well. OSX is adjusting the brightness of the display to the ambient light as well, I guess this is why the sensors don't react on the desktop background change.

In your case I can at the moment only suggest to lower the display brightness and put the "light" threshold in the configuration dialog of MacBook Tray Tools higher.

There's another issue occurring to me time to time: the sensors are getting used to the low light conditions, reporting high values after some time (e.g. raising to 150 even though its relatively dark), however exposing the sensors to the light for short time brings them back to normal (e.g. 15.) I'm not quite clear yet how to work around this problem :) Keeping LCD brightness low is reducing the chance this occurs.

[Paul2660]

I just wanted to add my thanks for your application. It works as stated. I have always loved Apple's ambient illumination and was shocked that under XP it didn't work. Your driver is great.

I would like to ask, you mention making a shortcut and moving that to the startup folder. I have done that, i.e made a shortcut of the actual exe and put it in my startup folder, however on boot, it load and I have to manually start the exe each time. Don't get me wrong as it's not a big deal to do that, however I was curious how or where you had loaded the shortcut in XP.

Thanks
Paul c.

[Dmitri]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for nice feedback, I'm glad you find it useful.
To setup the tray tool to load automatically the next time you login - open the explorer and locate the .exe file, drag the file to [Start] button on the taskbar and wait until the start menu opens, then continue dragging it to "All Programs" -> Startup. This will create the shortcut in the startup group. If you have a localised version of XP, the Startup group may have a different name, corresponding to your language.

Dmitri

[mikael]

Thanks for this wonderful app... it's so stupid that someone can create by himself this utility and Apple with all it's resources failed to provide one with bootcamp. happy though this one came along...

My issues on the MBP 17 are that the lights keep turning ond an off, depending on how i move my hands... so the sensors should respond to the average illumination over a period of time, so that they don't get confused by the hands typing. screen brightness is also a factor that influences the backlight in osx too.... the reaction time to small changes in light could be slower, whereas for dramatic changes in light intensity, it could be faster...

i don't know if what i wrote makes any sense, i'm not a programmer, but this crossed my mind using the app.

using the motion sensor would also be nice... i dont think that creating anything revolutionary should be a priority, but getting it to function as in osx would be great. park the hard drive, maybe use it as an input for a desktop changing application for windows (as SmackBook)

[Dmitri]

Hi Mikael,

thanks for some interesting ideas.

You can solve the issue of sensors overreacting to your hand movements using the threshold sliders: increase the distance between the darkness/light sliders.

[CrazyLexx]

Hi

I put together a small tray app which lets you control the keyboard backlight from windows system tray, also supporting automatic backlight adjustment based on light sensor input.

Download the latest version of the tool from:
http://dmitri.v.googlepages.com/macbooktraytools

Thanks to enj0y for providing initial apple SMC I/O code in his initial post:
http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=1472

have fun

Dmitri
Are you still working on this nice tool? Any news on a new version?

Thanks,
Tom

[Dmitri]

Hi Tom,

At the moment the priority slipped down a little unfortunately, due to general lack of time. I have quite some items on the tray tools TODO list and hope to get back to the development, as soon as possible!

Cheers,
Dmitri

[epsonguy]

Is there a way to make the backlight brightness jump in brightness more quickly and dim more quickly? I assume that your tray app may be sending commands to turn the brightness up in 1 step increments and it would be nice if we had to option to set the increments that it increases by. For example if I set it to go to 255 brightness, I would want it to increase by 5% or 10% each time the app sent the command to the keyboard backlight to increase in brightness that way it comes on quickly and fades out quickly. Please let me know if this is possible and if I'm totally wrong about how your app works.

[Dmitri]

hi,

yes you are absolutely correct, thats how it works. The settings you are looking for are already present, just not available in GUI. However you can configure them by editing the registry directly. Open the key "HKCU\Software\metaMASTERS\MacBookTrayTools\Backlig ht" using the registry editor.

Along with the settings already configurable via GUI you will also find following additional values:

"SmoothDimmerIncrement" - Dimmer increment steps

"SmoothDimmerInterval" - Number of milliseconds between increments

"SensorProbeInterval" - Sensor probe interval in milliseconds, set this to lower values to have quicker response to the ambient light changes. I've set it conservatively high to prevent overreaction and keep the sensor polling lower. Decrease this on your own risk, I don't recommend setting it too low :)

Feel free to share your preferred settings here!

Cheers,
Dmitri

[Nos Historiae]

I installed the latest file on Vista, and it is not working. Can someone tell me how to get this working? I think the latest version here is not made for Vista. Please help. My email is:

kursyhistorii@lycos.com

[MowgliBook]

use Input Remapper (http://www.olofsson.info/index.html?inputremapper.html)