Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

Backlight Brightness Setting

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kingpeck:
I have noticed that on my iPod Mini, the backlight can fade its brightness down when turning off. I am not sure whether it is done using a stepping down of brightness using software timers, or a hardware setting, but I would think that it may be possible to add an option to just make the backlights top brightness level a little lower.

Now, if this is possible without any major coding, I am uncertain, but there is extra code in place to take into account hardware that can support fading of the backlight, as there are options to change the timing of it.

This would make it possible to increase battery life, as well as provide a way to dim the light being produced by the device when used in a really dark place and you want to be able to see it without squinting and blocking your eyes.

nls:
I'm not certain about the hardware in the mini (so if someone who knows can fill that in it would be great) but a few devices we support do not have the hardware to control the backlight brightness, the fading is then usually done with software pwm but running this pwm uses a fair bit of cpu and may require the cpu to be boosted to avoid ficker so while it's fine to run it for a few seconds to fade, running it always would be bad.

kingpeck:
Great explanation.

I suppose then that it is only really an issue regarding whether it uses a software module to control it, and generally, as far as I can tell, it is easier to write code for all platforms than for individual ones. Totally understandable.

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