First, use the Power Manager set your screen to go "off" after X (whatever trips your trigger) minutes of inactivity. Blanking makes it black, but I guess leaves the light on.
In Navigatrix here is what happens with your display:
A gps tells the system where it is.
When the sun goes down it gently shift the display
RED and reduces the display backlighting.
The little light bulb icon in the lower right (on the toolbar) toggles a 3 way setting:
- Do nothing; no redshift 100% backlighting
- Full redshift; full reduction of backlighting
- Partial redshift; partial reduction of backlighting.
I refer to them as Off; Full: and Civilised.
Personally I never use "Off". I use "Full" when running at night. I use "Civilised" when there are other none-red lights on in the cabin and generally just leave it there.
This is because when the sun comes up, and the ambient light increase the process of redshifting and dimming is gently reversed. It's 'set it and forget it.'
If the system never has had a gps plugged into it, it will not know where it is and the calculations for the sun's relative position will be off.
Likewise, if the system has been moved without an updated location, the calculations will be off.
If you manually adjust 'brightness' (or gamma) it will revert back to the automated settings when the system verifies that everything is still functioning as it should.
There is one problem with this. Old age.
I could say the problem is "What if I don't want those settings?", but they are optimal. If you have daylight, very rarely would you dim the screen. You might as well turn it off, in my opinion.
The other option is the desire to make the display brighter in the night. If you are young there is no problem, the settings are the best and most energy efficient around. The programming was done by a young fella. Nearly all the time, those under 40 years old do not have a problem. But if you're older, like me; and you are no longer reading comic books by candlelight; you know we need more light for visual acuity sometimes, and it would be nice to change this.
I wrote this little script that will do just that. I call it 'brimmer' for The Brighter-Dimmer.
Code:
#!/bin/bash
# Brighter-Dimmer
# This script can be used in the Navigatrix system
# in conjunction with redshift/nightshift display
# modifications to set 0-100% of LCD Backlight Range
# of the 10 step backlight scale (0-9) provided
# by most current LCD displays
brimmer=$(zenity --title "Brimmer - the brighter dimmer" --scale --text "Set the Brightness, or dimness, on a scale of 0-100" --min-value=0 --max-value=100 --value=30 --step 10)
#
# Navigatrix sets the colour temp to create the best of all possible worlds
# OFF, no change; Civilised, easy on the eyes night use; and FULL, for the
# rhodopsin sparing red as you can get with what you've got setting.
# The config file is...
shiftsettings=/usr/local/bin/nightshift
# read it
cat $shiftsettings >$shiftsettings.new
# Locate and substitute the new input values and re-write the file.
# To change the backlight from ONLY the 'Civilised' setting to both 'light' and 'dark'
# change 'lightx=' to 'x='. Change it to 'darkx=' for ONLY the 'Night Vision Red'
# Change it to anything else to have it not work at all.
sed "s/lightx=\"\?[[:digit:]]\{1,3\}\"/lightx=\"$brimmer\"/g" <$shiftsettings.new >$shiftsettings
# Do it even if it's wrong.
nightshift restore
# ^ the syntax: nightshift [dark|light|toggle|restore|off]
# ...but cleanup when you're done.
rm $shiftsettings.new
There are 6 lines of code padded out with chatty commentary.
It's simple, it's basic, but it does the job...
Open a terminal (
<ctrl><alt><t>) and at the prompt enter:
Code:
sudo medit /usr/local/bin/brimmer /usr/share/applications/brimmer.desktop
Cut and paste the entire script above into the first tab of the text editor that pops up.
Into the second tab, cut and paste:
Code:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Brighter Dimmer
Comment=Brighter Dimmer to re/set LCD backlight for Navigatix Redshift/Nightshift
Exec=gksu --description /usr/share/applications/brimmer.desktop /usr/local/bin/brimmer
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Settings;
This later file is a Menu entry created in "Preferences". It will be near the top.
Save them both and close the text editor and in the terminal enter:
Code:
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/brimmer
This makes the script executable.
Try it...at night, after the system has been informed of its location.
