Notices

Advanced Backlight is a statusbar applet that replaces Nokia's built-in backlight and volume applets. The goal is to provide the user with access to the full 128 levels of backlight, as opposed to the 5 levels that Nokia provides, and to reduce statusbar clutter by combining the volume and brightness applets into a single applet.



The applet provides 128 levels of backlight for the N810 and 127 levels for the N800. The N800 does not have the option to turn off the backlight, as it would be unreadable without the transflective screen (though a future release may include an option to enable this "dangerous" feature). The icon is made up of 7 levels of backlight and 6 levels of volume (mute and 0-4) for a total of 42 icons.




WOOHOO! advanced-backlight is now in the extras repository!

Easy installation (Chinook): Install
Easy installation (Diablo): Install

Get the .deb:
Chinook: advanced-backlight_0.14-3_armel.deb.
Diablo: advanced-backlight_0.14-3_armel.deb.

See the Garage page: http://adv-backlight.garage.maemo.org/.

Change Log:

Advanced Backlight 0.14 (7/18/2008):

• Now (again) supports 770 with fanoush kernel for backlight updates (built for OS2008HE, use chinook deb).
• Changed icon format to better show muted volume level.

Advanced Backlight 0.13 (7/16/2008, -devel only):

• Initial volume should be correct now.
• Added GConf notification on volume change.
• I18n support.
• Added translations for: de es fi fr nl pl ru se. Thanks to all translators!
• New approach for beep on volume change (daperl).
• Fixed mute at zero volume bug.
• Updated appearance of default iconset.

Advanced Backlight 0.12 (07/14/2008, -devel only):

• Switching directly to maximum brightness will now work correctly.
• Muted icon will display correctly when mute is set with volume 0.
• Now using threaded volume/brightness updates, patch by daperl.
• Using delayed brightness updates also improves smoothness.
• Added a new iconset, "Hildon". Thanks, loki!

Advanced Backlight 0.11 (7/10/2008):

• Fixed volume beep.
• Fixed brightness slider (was stuck at max 1/2 brightness).
• Improved rotation icons to function more logically.

Advanced Backlight 0.10 (7/9/2008):

• Added jott to the Advanced Backlight team!
• Added labels to the sliders.
• Added rotation support.
  • Supercedes jott's rotate-sb-plugin.
    
  • If you have rotation support installed, the applet will show an orientation selector.
• Changed brightness slider to match the volume bar.
• Changed the settings dialog to better match the rest of the platform.
• Changed to calling dsme syscalls directly, instead of through dsmetool.
• Finally have a proper container for the applet. Many, many thanks to jott (for this and many other improvements)!
  • Tap anywhere outside the applet to close it now.
    
  • Style now matches the Nokia applets.
    
  • "Settings..." is no longer a button, but a real menu entry.
• Fixed crash when changing the volume for the first time.
• General code cleanup.

Advanced Backlight 0.9b (6/27/2008):

• Added hardware button configuration options.
• Added beep on volume change.
• Added option for beep on volume change.
• Fixed regression with control panel icon.

Advanced Backlight 0.9 (6/6/2008):

• Added support for hardware buttons (brightness: left/right, volume: up/down, close: escape).
• Added a configuration GUI.
• Added the option to disallow/allow turning off the backlight entirely.
• Settings now persist across reboots.
• Added support for icon sets.
• Added LCARS icon set.
• Changed the applet list icon.
• Changed the capitalization in the settings menu (GAN).

Advanced Backlight 0.8 (2/12/2008):

• Added a volume slider.
• New icon set showing 7 levels of backlight and 6 levels of volume.

Advanced Backlight 0.6 (2/5/2008):

• Now in a black frame (looks much better).
• Uses a hildonized popup method, so it responds much better to focus changes.

Advanced Backlight 0.5 (1/21/2008):

• First Garage release.
• Changed from full window to popup.
• Removed system() in favor of g_spawn_async().

To Do:

• Update icons to show more accurate data when muted. [Done in 0.14]
• Update icons for compatability with above task. [Done in 0.14]
• Add support for OS2007HE on N770. [Done in 0.14]
• Add support for the N810's light meter. [Half-done]
  • Need to flesh out implementation details... What exactly will it do?
• General code cleanup.
• Consider adding "Settings..." links similar to the original volume/brightness applets.

Other Notes:

I'd like to thank all of #maemo for testing/suggestions, and especially GeneralAntilles for contributing custom icons and tons of motivation (and typing up most of this post)!
Also, many thanks to Advanced Backlight's newest team member, jott, and the many translators that helped us provide localization support for many languages!


If anyone has any more suggestions, I'd be happy to consider them and possibly add a few more things to my TODO list.

Nice ! Even if it didn't do anything better than the existing icons (which it does), saving space on the toolbar alone would make it worthwhile !

Wow! Thanks a lot, I've been hoping somebody would make something like this eventually! I've always wondered why Nokia thought it was a good idea to limit the brightness levels so much, especially with the difference between level 1 and 2 brightness which is like huge.

Love the tool, with the other two icons turned off, and this one in its place, my desktop seems so much less cluttered... will run in for a few days and watch what happens, but my guess is that all around it is a winner. Thanks,

Thor

Very handy! I'd also be interested in knowing how you got that clock up there in the statusbar??

bow: That's osso-statusbar-cpu

And thanks for the compliments everyone!

http://people.debian.org/~tschmidt/maemo/chinook/

It's the tschmidt repository on gronmayer.

This is a great program, but I can't use it. Can you add a light meter support, like an original applet?

This is possible. See http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=16414

Did you mean that you can't use it because the light meter support is an essential feature to you, or because it actually doesn't work for some reason?

I don't have an n810 so I don't know how the original applet for n810 interfaces with the lightmeter. Does it try to automatically adjust the light level somehow? Explain a bit more if you could, and I will consider adding it to my TODO list...

The N810 has a ambient light meter on the front beside the camera (that I keep annoyingly covering up with my thumb). The brightness is automagically adjusted using this as an input to keep the same apparent brightness of the screen. It will turn the brightness down in a dark environment and turn it up in a bright one and the range offset is adjusted by the brightness slider, not the brightness directly. I haven't found a way to turn this off.

It is a neat feature but I have found that it is non-ideal in two ways:
1) I keep on falsely triggering it to think I am in a dark room when I am not by covering the sensor with my thumb.
2) The adjustment is quite step-wise and delayed.

If you could implement it with fixes to both smoothness of transition and latency without gobbling CPU time with frequent hardware polling, that would be superb. Otherwise, I think that I will install your applet now just because it disables the effect ... the fact that it is a cool applet-bar space saver is a bonus.

Not sure that you can do anything about my thumb :]