Brightify 0.1.13

Brightify is an OS-independent application that adjusts monitor brightness using the DDC/CI protocol and custom protocols for USB monitors, featuring a brightness sensor for automatic adjustments based on ambient light, and can be controlled via a taskbar icon.

Brightify

This app allows you to set the brightness of your monitor(s). It is essentially a wrapper around the DDC/CI protocol, which is supported by most modern monitors. It also supports adding custom communication protocols to control the brightness of Monitors connected via USB. You can find an example implementation for the Gigabyte M27Q in here. The app is designed to be run in the background and can be controlled via a taskbar icon. It also supports a brightness sensor that can automatically adjust the brightness based on the ambient light.

Getting started

1. Install brightify by running pip install Brightify. This package is regularly uploaded to PyPi. If you want to install the latest version, you can clone this repository from GitHub and install it with pip install -e . in the root directory.
2. To start the app: python -m brightify run. You can exit either by right-clicking the icon in the taskbar and selecting "Exit" or by pressing Ctrl+C in the terminal.
3. To start the app at startup (or logon) and add a menu icon, run python -m brightify add all. To remove the both, run python -m brightify remove all.

Additional requirements for Linux

As the DDC/CI protocol requires write access to the /dev/i2c-* devices, you need to add your user to the i2c group (or run the script as the root user).

• First, verify that the group exists by running getent group i2c.
  • If it does not exist, you need to create it by running sudo groupadd i2c and also assign the i2c devices to the group by running sudo chown root:i2c /dev/i2c-*.
• Now you can add your user to the group by running sudo usermod -aG i2c $USER. Verify that the user is in the group by running groups $USER and checking if i2c is listed. If running groups does not show i2c, you need restart the system.
• Finally, you might need to change the permissions of the /dev/i2c-* so that the group has read/write access. You can do this by running sudo chmod g+rw /dev/i2c-*.
  • If this change is not permanent you can create a udev rule by creating a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/ with the content KERNEL=="i2c-[0-9]*", GROUP="i2c", MODE="0660".
  • After creating the file, you need to reload the udev rules by running sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger.
• To remove the user from the group, run sudo deluser $USER i2c.

Optional arguments

There are several other arguments you can pass to the app, see python -m brightify --help for more information.

• To target add/remove only the startup run python -m brightify add/remove startup.
  • To add a task to the task scheduler on Windows, pass --use-scheduler. It will request elevated permissions.
• To add/remove only the menu icon run python -m brightify add/remove menu-icon.
• By default, the terminal will be hidden, but you can change this by passing the --force-console argument to the run or add action.
• To disable animations, pass the --no-animations argument to the run or add action.

Set up the brightness sensor

• Modify the SensorComm class to match your device and firmware
• Modify the code that is polling from the brightness sensor Device Firmware
• Modify platformio.ini and enter your board ( see supported boards)
• Run pio run -t upload in the terminal to upload the firmware to the board. If everything is working, the Auto Checkbox for each supported Monitor should now be clickable

Remarks

• Currently, only the Windows task bar icon is supported, the main part of this app is OS independent.
• Feel free to create a pull request and add your own USB Monitor
• Note that a USB Monitor will replace a DDC/CI Monitor with the same name. If you want to use both, you need to change the name of your USB Monitor implementation. In case a monitor is found but does not send its name, we cannot distinguish between DDC/CI and USB Monitors. In this case, both will be added.