Ambient light level sensor in Fedora 8???

Aaron Konstam akonstam at sbcglobal.net
Sun Nov 11 21:45:49 UTC 2007


On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 14:04 -0500, Bob Goodwin wrote:
> Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > I thought that I was going nuts at first, but I confirmed this after 
> > some experimentation: after upgrading one of my laptops to Fedora 8, 
> > the LCD backlight seems to autoadjust itself according to the ambient 
> > light level in the room. This did not happen in Fedora 7.
> >
> > I left the laptop running, then came back a few minutes later with the 
> > lights off in the room, and the laptop's screen was about half at its 
> > usual brightness. I thought that it was some screensaver at first, but 
> > it wasn't. Uh-oh, is my backlight busted? I turned on the lights in 
> > the room, so I could see better, and immediately the LCD went up to 
> > its full brightness level. I turned the lights off, and a few seconds 
> > later the display dimmed to about a 50% level. WTF?
> >
> > This is a no-name brand laptop. I have a small widget directly above 
> > the screen that is labeled with a small etched picture of a 
> > microphone. That's, apparently, my laptop's built-in microphone, which 
> > I never used. I discovered that if I cover up the entire microphone 
> > sensor, that triggers the backlight to dim to half power. Looks like I 
> > have an ambient light sensor in there. News to me -- the laptop's ~2 
> > years old, and I never knew about it until now. It apparently didn't 
> > do anything in F7, neither does the dual-booted Win XP pay any 
> > attention to the came, but in F8 it came alive and made its presence 
> > known.
> >
> > Does anyone know anything about this, and, specifically, if there's 
> > anything in F8 Gnome that lets me tweak this sensor's settings? I 
> > don't see anything going to /var/log/messages when I play with the 
> > sensor. A brief search didn't find anything. I don't see anything in 
> > the Gnome power management menu, except the usual global backlight 
> > levels for AC Power and Battery modes, and I can trigger this sensor 
> > both on AC Power, and battery power, apparently.
> >
> >
> >
> Have you considered black electrical tape over the sensor?
> 
Click and Clack would be proud of this answer.
--
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It takes both a weapon, and two people, to commit a murder.
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net




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