backlight, brightness control on official disp or another?

[backmailingbox]

Hi,
I have one piece of official 7'' rasp pi display
It is ok but one not nice thing.
I am not able to change brightness or backlight from python.
There is possibility only to switch backlight on/off.
It is not enough and this missing feature is really moving this display into ...
Not usable for any night device like weather station, alarmclock and so..

So I have 2 questions:

1. Will there be in short future any firmware update which enable brightness/backlight control
via sotware (python) on official rasp pi display?

2. Is there any other 7'' capacitive touch display on the market which enable software (python)
brightnes and backlight control?

[jwatte]

This code should work fine:

Code: Select all

f = open("/sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness", "wb")
f.write("80\n")
f.close()

If it doesn't work, then one of two things are wrong:

1) You're using a v1.0 display instead of the v1.1 display -- I don't know if backlight adjust actually works on 1.0.

2) You're seeing a permission error and need to run as root, and/or you need to set the permissions of the /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight files.

I can confirm that I have a version 1.1 display, and I can change the backlight brightness with this code.

[JimmyN]

1. Will there be in short future any firmware update which enable brightness/backlight control
via sotware (python) on official rasp pi display?

There is no firmware update, just a hardware update. The very recently released v1.1 screen has brightness control, but if you've had the screen for more than a couple of weeks you have v1.0 and there is no way to change brightness.

In answer to your second question, you can buy another 7" display (v1.1) and you'll have the compatibility and brightness control.

[backmailingbox]

Hi jwatte,
where and when did you buy version 1.1 display?

[W. H. Heydt]

1. Will there be in short future any firmware update which enable brightness/backlight control
via sotware (python) on official rasp pi display?

There is no firmware update, just a hardware update. The very recently released v1.1 screen has brightness control, but if you've had the screen for more than a couple of weeks you have v1.0 and there is no way to change brightness.

In answer to your second question, you can buy another 7" display (v1.1) and you'll have the compatibility and brightness control.

Thanks a bunch for that data. It answers some questions I've been mulling over.