LCD brightness idle dimmer

[yak]

Lately I've played a bit with ThinkPad hotkey driver for Windows. I managed to find a way to access its services from a Python script. This enabled me to easily control things like volume, screen brightness and ThinkLight. I've used Python because it's the best to quickly mock up some things that actually work.

One of more interesting usages for this is a screen dimmer. The idea is to lower the brightness of the LCD after some predefined user inactivity. Touching a mouse or pressing a key brings the previous brightness back. This is a nice power saving feature, I've read somewhere that it's available on Macs.

If you want to try it, make sure you have the latest Python installed. Then download this ZIP file and extract the files to some directory.

Now start the dimmer.pyw script and make sure that the LCD brightness isn't 0 and that you're on battery. If that's true, the screen should dim after 10s. Move your mouse to light it up again.

To configure the thing, simply edit the dimmer.pyw script (use your favorite text editor). Options are at the top of it.

If you like the dim, place a shortcut to the dimmer.pyw script into your Autostart folder.

The ZIP contains a ThinkLight blinking script too if you're interested.

Have fun.

[yak]

I've uploaded a video showing the dimmer to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7RLHP_c7gE

[yak]

Detailed installation and configuration instructions have been added to ThinkWiki:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Automatic ... ss#Windows

[sjthinkpader]

...
One of more interesting usages for this is a screen dimmer. The idea is to lower the brightness of the LCD after some predefined user inactivity. Touching a mouse or pressing a key brings the previous brightness back. This is a nice power saving feature, I've read somewhere that it's available on Macs.
....

Since CCF in LCDs have a definitive life span, leaving it on is not a good idea. Should simply turn the backlight off.

[yak]

Since CCF in LCDs have a definitive life span, leaving it on is not a good idea. Should simply turn the backlight off.

True but I don't know how to do it yet. My script uses the same backlight brightness setting that is accessible using the Fn+PgUp/Dn hotkeys.

One can always turn the whole LCD off (backlight and display) using the standard Windows options. I have it configured to dim the backlight quite early and turn the LCD off in next couple minutes.

[bluppfisk]

Hi yak! Great script, only one thing: it sends my cpu usage (also when clocked on 1,8 Ghz) all the way up to 100% (as shown by Notebook Hardware Control and tpfancontrol). So I'm afraid power saved by dimming the lcd is sort of annulled by the extra processor performance.

I don't know where to look, could you tell me what I should tweak?