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Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

lunar.fyi

31–40 of 143 posts

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#32
post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

This is hilarious if this is true.

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#33
post #31

Creator of Lunar here. Thank you all for the kind comments and generous donations and many thanks to the OP for posting this! Let me know if you have any questions or quick feedback about Lunar.

Really well done.

AFAIK there is no events for brightness change so this is why polling for main monitor brightness?

What are you using for analytics at "https://log.lunar.fyi?

I have been using [1] before, your app seems much more slick

[1]: https://github.com/KAMIKAZEUA/NativeDisplayBrightness

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait...so after the 100.000th write, your monitor will be forever stuck on the brightness it was set to that time? BTW, assuming I change brightness 20 times per day, that would still give me 5000 days ≈ 13,5 years of service. By that time I definitely hope to use a different monitor than today

No, after 100.000th write your monitor is toast because the EEPROM died. Also note that most people change brightness in increments, with each step causing a write.

Is there a way to know how my monitor does this?

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#36
post #31

Creator of Lunar here. Thank you all for the kind comments and generous donations and many thanks to the OP for posting this! Let me know if you have any questions or quick feedback about Lunar.

Really well done. AFAIK there is no events for brightness change so this is why polling for main monitor brightness? What are you using for analytics at " https://log.lunar.fyi ? I have been using [1] before, your app seems much more slick [1]: https://github.com/KAMIKAZEUA/NativeDisplayBrightness

Thanks!

Yes, there are no brightness change events, but reading the brightness is very fast so polling adds very little overhead.

For analytics I've just been using a plain nginx route that logs the request body to a static file, and I parse that using loki for further visualization in Grafana. I haven't found much value in that info though so I've decommissioned it after I migrated from nginx to Caddy. I'll remove the analytics request in the next update.

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#37

Neat. I have two external monitors which behave very differently though - please make the clipping setting per-monitor rather than global!

I guess it makes sense to have that setting per monitor. I just have to rethink the monitor settings UI because it seems I can't fit anything else in there.

I already have a lot of users telling me that the UI is too complex.

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#38
post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

I suppose it's a type of problem that solves itself: If companies are dumb enough to store brightness settings in EEPROM, they're only doing it because no one uses DDC/CI. Use DDC/CI, and they'll stop. Even NAND is wrong if brightness is actually dynamically controlled, it should just be RAM.

Ahh, but this information needs to make it to consumers so they don't get stuck with dud monitors that have internal storage that rapidly wears. How, as a consumer, do I know which monitors store settings in such a manner and therefore avoid them when making purchasing decisions? Perhaps Lunar and Flux could make monitor recommendations with affiliate links, Wirecutter style. I don't want to have to research, just tell me what works best so I can pull my credit card out.

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#39
post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

You never know if a wear leveling algorithm has been implemented so flash type isn't going to make lifetime determinable. Even without, 100 erases a day will last for 3 years or longer.

Re: Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

#40
post #13

Got a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) weeks ago and bought a LG monitor ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YGZ7C1K ). The brightness setting bothered me for 2 weeks as neither the Mac OSX nor LG's onscreen control software can set the brightness for the external monitor. The external monitor brightness changes every time I open/close the macbook lid. Thanks to both ddcctl and MonitorControl, I can finally set a fixed…

I have the exact same setup and same issues!! So frustrating.
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