PINE64

Greetings,

The purpose of this tutorial blog post is to describe how to setup LCD brightness keybindings in the i3wm tiling window manager , on your Pinebook.

Below I am providing a script which will be placed in /usr/local/sbin/lcd_bright.sh , which may be used to set the brightness of the LCD display in increments of +10 or -10. I will describe the step(s) necessary to activate the script via /etc/sudoers.d so that the keybindings ( bindsym ) in the i3 config can run as sudo without needing to prompt for the password !

First, the scripts... the first one is the lcd_bright.sh ( which does the work ) and the second one is the source file for /etc/sudoers.d which allows the bindsym to call lcd_bright.sh without a password.

lcd_bright.sh

Code:
#!/bin/bash

#

# lcd_bright.sh v0.1a

#

# Mark H. Harris

# 08/31/2017

#

# Usage:  lcd_bright.sh <U|D> <value>

#

MODE=`echo $1 |tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'`

LCDVALUE=`cat /sys/class/backlight/lcd0/brightness`

if [ "$MODE" = "U" ]

then

   NEWVALUE=$(( $LCDVALUE + $2 ))

   if [ $NEWVALUE -le 100 ]

   then

       echo $NEWVALUE > /sys/class/backlight/lcd0/brightness

       echo $NEWVALUE

   else

       echo $LCDVALUE

   fi

else

   NEWVALUE=$(( $LCDVALUE - $2 ))

   if [ $NEWVALUE -gt 30 ]

   then

       echo $NEWVALUE > /sys/class/backlight/lcd0/brightness

       echo $NEWVALUE

   else

       echo $LCDVALUE

   fi

fi

lcd_bright_rules

Code:
# lcd bright rules

Cmnd_Alias LCDBRIGHT=/usr/local/sbin/lcd_bright.sh

ALL ALL=NOPASSWD: LCDBRIGHT

Procedure:

Open a terminal and access root with :

       sudo -i

Place the lcd_bright.sh script in the /usr/local/sbin/ directory.

Set the owner and group with :

       cd /usr/local/sbin/

       chown root lcd_bright.sh

       chgrp root lcd_bright.sh

Make the script executable with :

       chmod 0754 lcd_bright.sh

Place the lcd_bright_rules file in the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory.

Set the owner and group with :

       cd /etc/sudoers.d

       chown root lcd_bright_rules

       chgrp root lcd_bright_rules

Set special read permissions with :

       chmod 0440 lcd_bright_rules

At this point the system is setup to use the lcd_bright.sh script. The last step(s) necessary is to set the keybindings in the i3wm config file.

You do not need root permissions to do the following; if you're still in root# please exit.

exit

Change into the i3wm config directory for your default pine64 i3 user with :

cd ~/.config/i3/

Use your favorite editor to edit the config file.

Somewhere near the end of the other bindsym entries , add these two definitions :

Code:
bindsym $mod+Shift+u exec sudo /usr/local/sbin/lcd_bright.sh u 10

bindsym $mod+Shift+d exec sudo /usr/local/sbin/lcd_bright.sh d 10

Save the file.

Re-read the config file with :

       mod + Shift + c

Restart the i3wm tiling window manager with :

       mod + Shift + r

Congratulations! Your brightness keybindings are set for i3wm.

To use the keybindings use :

       mod + Shift + u    (turns up the LCD backlight by 10)

       mod + Shift + d    (turns down the LCD backlight by 10)

Shy

Hi There,

Thank you for your help. I have a Pinebook 1080P running i3 on top of KDE Neon. I have applied several of your tips.
I followed the instructions step by step but they are not working.

I wonder if anybody has ideas on how to control LCD brightness on i3 in a Pinebook 10180p?

The FAQ in the Wiki suggests the shell command xbrightness
http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/1080P_P...n_Page#FAQ

However with Manjaro this seems not to work but I think I remember that with the KDE Neon image it worked. You can just try

MarkHaysHarris777

alduplat

Surehand53