mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Alex Murray <murray.alex@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the feedback rydberg - after looking into it some more it
seems the new MBP / MBA's use the 10 byte light value from the left
sensor as follows:

first 2 bytes seem to always be 01
next 2 bytes are a big endian 16-bit value of the ambient light value with a maximum value of 65535
next 2 bytes are a big endian 16-bit value of the ambient light value but is somehow scaled down from the first one and perhaps has a different dynamic range
next 2 bytes are a big endian 16-bit value of the ambient light value with a maximum value of 1023
last 2 bytes I got no idea about

So I've cooked up a patch to use the value which reports 1023 as max
which just basically divides this by 4 to give us a value which we can
return with a maximum of 255 like the max value on the older machines.

It also seems the right sensor doesn't ever report anything so we just
return 0 for this.

Please test the attached patch and if possible can this be merged into
the  applesmc-dkms mactel package?

** Attachment added: "report light sensor value correctly on newer MacBooks"
   http://launchpadlibrarian.net/21099779/applesmc-dkms-light-sensor-fix.patch

-- 
Backlight keeps getting darker on MacBookPro
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/285815
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Support, which is the registrant for Mactel Support.

Status in Mactel Support: Fix Released
Status in “gnome-power-manager” source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
Status in “hal” source package in Ubuntu: New

Bug description:
Binary package hint: hal

kjano@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

i am using a macbook pro 3.1 with intrepid beta and the nvidia driver. i finally managed to have the backlight keys F1 and F2 working but now i face another problem. when i change the backlight setting, it resets itself after some minutes to an average light level. then i use f2 to increase backlight again and some time later it goes down again.i have deactivated the shade setting in the gnome power management. the light is also turned down while moving the mouse or typing.