Can this be done?

Today I was informed by someone who knows a lot about VFDs that you can essentially eliminate the risk of burn-in by turning it down to 70-80 percent brightness.

The default player software only allows dimming of the display when it's in the car. Can Hijack dim the display when it's on AC power?

force dc and dim away

Interesting idea, hadn't thought of that.

I'm asking on behalf of my friend Tod, who likes to keep his player in info:track mode but doesn't want burn-in. Maybe in his particular situation, forceDC is the right answer. Thanks.

That wouldn't work for anyone who had different settings for AC that they wanted to use in the home. Therefore, I for one still think it would be a cool thing for Hijack to do.

Sounds like a nice feature request to me. But I think it would make a cool request for the WISH forum for implementation directly into the player software.

Tony, use your powers of persuasion. If not, the next best thing would be for Mark to play around with it.

This functionality will be VERY useful for my alarm-clock setup. Both for burn-in prevention as well as keeping the ambient light in my room down at night.

Bruno

It might be a nice post-2.0 request for the default player software, but The Guys are trying to concentrate on only doing bugfixes at the moment. I thought that it might have more of a chance of showing up in Hijack before it showed up in the default player software.

Yeah, sounds good.

Busy here now. But I accept patches..

Cheers

ok.

>ok

I was hoping you might say that!

Ok, so is this to be a set & forget value (ie config.ini) or dynamic (ie use some valuable flash)?

My guess is that config.ini is the place for this, and unless I hear convincing arguments to the contrary, that is the way I'm going to code it...

sounds good.

See the comments inside hijack.c, just below the declaration of buttonled_menu_label

Display levels range from 000 to 239.

EDIT: note that Hugo suggests never using the brightest values (0 to 15), as they "overdrive" the display. This leaves us with a useable range from 16 .. 239, or 224 useable values.

Cheers

If you're going to do it in config (which is fine by me) are you planning on adding support for two states? Or just a single every-case setting?

I vote for two states if you hadn't already thought about that. Then of course comes the request for an easy way to toggle them via Hijack (maybe another fake button name would be nice - of course so would allowing it to work with the illumination line on the sled even when running AC mode)

Bruno

If we want separate dim/bright states, then there's no need for fake buttons or anything.. just the two settings in config.ini. Hijack can internally sense the dimmer wire (headlight sense) input.

-ml

Sweet. That works for me. I was just thinking about other people that might not be using (or might not want to use) the illumination line (which would require the sled). This is going to make my docking station even more like an actual alarm clock. Woohoo.

Bruno

Can you ask your friend if the setting is actually closer to 70 or 80? I think we'd hate to think at a later time... "Hmmm.. Guess it should have been closer to 70.... Ooops"

Bruno

Mmm.. actually, I suppose somebody should test to see if the player software actually already dims the display in AC/Home mode when the headlight sense (dimmer) wire is activated..

If so, then we probably just need the one setting: max brightness, or maybe a brightness offset or something.

Yep, I'm just compiling with some additional debug printks to look at this.

If I can hijack at the display ioctl and just override the level it would be simple.

I suppose somebody should test to see if the player software actually already dims the display in AC/Home mode when the headlight sense (dimmer) wire is activated.

Heh. That would be a good idea. No sense in re-inventing the wheel.

Can you ask your friend if the setting is actually closer to 70 or 80?

I'll send him here to add his input now, thanks.

Or just force the headlight-sense line active, in empeg_power.c

-ml

I tested the illumination sense while the player is in AC mode and it has no effect on the display unfortunately. Hopefully this can be included as part of the hack...

Testing method: Player powered through dock connections. Dummy plug inserted into AC jack to force AC mode. Illumination sense connected to +12 source and no effect (works as expected when I remove the dummy plug).

Bruno

I didn't think it would use the DC mode dimmer settings in AC mode. Oh well.

Can you ground it and try again? (instead of +12V)

I think it's active low, not sure though.

-ml

It's definitely active high. I tested in DC mode and it works fine. The simplest test of all is just to stick the dummy plug in and put the empeg in the car as normal (there's a cut-out in the sled which prevents the dummy plug from interfering with docking). And it doesn't work.

Bruno

I would tend to go with a setting near 70%. 80% may be a bit hot.