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The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#161

Post by throwanem »

alin23 wrote: post #100
throwanem wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it works at all is a major improvement, and the Raspberry Pi method is worth having as well; I've been working on something very similar since I got my M1 Mini and found ddcctl and Lunar unable to work there, but got little further than building the light sensor before other projects took priority - I expect I'll probably finish this one around the equinox. My work laptop, an Intel Mac, displays to and controls…

Hey, thank you for the support! I completely understand when users go with something more simple like a CLI or MonitorControl. I do the same myself when I don’t really need the features of a complex app. By the way, I’m not sure if I understood correctly but if you need an external ambient light sensor, Lunar supports that out of the box now: https://lunar.fyi/sensor

This is incredibly well realized!

Currently I'm working with a sensor homebrewed from a reverse-biased LED with a Darlington-pair amplifier - not what anyone would call accurate, but precise enough to calibrate reliably over the range of light values to be found in my office as long as I keep direct sunlight off the transistors.

Between that, a Pi, ddcutil, and the currently unoccupied DisplayPort input on my monitor, I'm hoping to brew up something that'll serve well enough - not terribly optimistic on that given that the monitor seems to maintain per-input brightness settings, but worth a try at least. (Also, if it does work, I can add an encoder with a built-in button as a manual override.)

On the other hand, it seems likely that, by the time I find that approach to fail, Lunar on Mac mini will be able to do DDC via HDMI - I thought it'd take a year at least after the M1 arch came out for anyone even to get as far as you already have, but clearly I failed to reckon with your dedication to the effort!

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#162

Post by alin23 »

fighterpilot wrote: post #125
alin23 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m using Hugo as the static site generator (it really helps with blogs but I wouldn’t use it for simple presentation webpages). I started with the Blogophonic theme but I have heavily edited it since then: https://github.com/formspree/blogophonic-hugo Unfortunately I don’t have some pre-made theme that I can share, I mostly improvised with colours and styles that I noticed look good on other websites, then settled o…

If it's easy, do you mind sharing the hex for some of the colors, such as the background? You've picked a really nice combo of colors that I'd like to bookmark

Sure, the whole website is open source. This is the file with the colors: https://github.com/alin23/alinpanaitiu.com/blob/master/asset...

Although I’m not using them all. I just port them from project to project

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#163

Post by cto_of_antifa »

BurningFrog wrote: post #85
GekkePrutser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, we moved all our European call center operations there in my last job. The low wages are a big attraction for companies. I felt bad that we were paying so little though the people working there didn't seem to mind. For most it was their first job. But it surprised me that wages are that low. Also, Romanians tend to have excellent language skills in most Latin languages and English so that helps a lot too. The…

> the people working there didn't seem to mind It's good to remember that, for those people, this is the best job they could get!

Which still isn’t a good argument for underpaying them. It just means you can get away with it in that market

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#164

Post by alin23 »

nuker wrote: post #159
alin23 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. I’ve been using IOKit since day one which is pretty much completely banned from App Store apps.

But have you tried? I read first page I got, and it says "it depends" https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/51595

Since then, Lunar has acquired a lot more AppStore violations like linking to frameworks located in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks, not being sandboxed, and not caring about a lot of their design guidelines.

So I didn’t really want to go through their process when the chances of getting an approval are close to zero.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#165

Post by GekkePrutser »

alin23 wrote: post #160
GekkePrutser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea made a rotary encoder (dimmer) like that with Zigbee. It works well with Home Assistant. It actually had an accelerometer to determine its position, so it could be rotated within a passive magnetic mount. Unfortunately they stopped making them. They replaced it with a square one that doubled as an on/off button. But perhaps you can still find some second-hand. It was in their Tradfri range.

I have about 5 or 6 of those square on/off ZigBee switches. They're perfect for automating through Home Assistant. Now I just have to find those encoders you're talking about. It's exactly what I wanted to buy.

Yeah they were pretty great but DeCONZ didn't support them. Which just happened to be the stack I chose.

Apparently they were supported through the HA integration but not in the GUI. They also work with ZHA as far as I know.

I still see some on Ebay, not sure if they can be shipped to Europe though: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133779313546?hash=item1f25de538a:g:... . This tends to be an issue.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#166

Post by FireBeyond »

pram wrote: post #144
FireBeyond wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I'd be very happy to have a ProDisplay. I may even buy it for the aesthetics (well, above and beyond everything else - I'm also a professional photographer). But as you say, it's more the attitude. I'm guessing whatever proprietary stuff they've done to drive the XDR at 6K in HDR isn't compatible with DSC, and there's little interest in fixing it.

XDR uses DSC on any RDNA (5X00) card, it’s not proprietary.

Which makes me wonder even more why DSC is completely non-functional for any other monitor under Big Sur and Monterey.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#167

Post by FireBeyond »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #104
FireBeyond wrote: post #30

Apple seems to be making a lot of display related things difficult lately. This, and Display Stream Compression are two. Just as high refresh and HDR were becoming really mainstream, Big Sur completely broke what was working flawlessly in Catalina (and it has not been fixed as of either 11.5, or the Monterey betas so far - and by completely broke, I mean does not work, at all, for anybody, not just 'some edge case').…

> my Mac Pro happily drove 2 27" 4K monitors in 10 bit color at 144Hz. It's a bit tangential, but I keep seeing people mentioning 4K monitors with high refresh rates on HN, but I've never seen any. Would you care mentioning what make / model those are?

I have 2 LG 27GN950-B's. They're great - very thin bezel, high color accuracy (not reference level, but better than most), and after a firmware update, I can drive my screens at 160Hz on overclock (via menu on the display, no custom weirdness required) or 144Hz in HDR/10 bit.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#168

Post by FireBeyond »

rasz wrote: post #143
FireBeyond wrote: post #30

Apple seems to be making a lot of display related things difficult lately. This, and Display Stream Compression are two. Just as high refresh and HDR were becoming really mainstream, Big Sur completely broke what was working flawlessly in Catalina (and it has not been fixed as of either 11.5, or the Monterey betas so far - and by completely broke, I mean does not work, at all, for anybody, not just 'some edge case').…

I dont understand, you want high bitrate accurate display to the point of actually considering XDR, but simultaneously you really want LOSSY compression? The not so secret secret of Display Stream Compression is it degrades picture quality.

It was news to me, but XDR _also_ uses DSC.

I want high refresh rates, which help even for operations work, web browsing, not just photography and eye fatigue. And I want HDR.

Frankly, the only reason I'd consider the XDR is as mentioned, aesthetics - I've got the 2019 Mac Pro, and I recently bought a house and set my desk at home up in the middle of my office, not against a wall, so entirely superficially, the aesthetics of the back of the XDR display could look nice.

The only thing the XDR has going for it is color accuracy (which is orthogonal, though certainly impacted, I'm sure, to lossy compression), and resolution (though I still like my two ultra thin bezel 4K screens versus one 6K screen). The refresh rate on the XDR is 60Hz.

Oh, and the XDR is not bugged/broken/crippled by Apple so as not to be able to run at full capability.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#169

Post by oblio »

naniwaduni wrote: post #157
oblio wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum net salary in Romania is about €280, which is about $360, which is about $500 net. So $6000 per year net. And no (u abused) junior dev is going to be making minimum salary, that's janitor salary.

> The minimum net salary in Romania is about €280, which is about $360, which is about $500 net. This looks like you double-converted, and and also at an exceptionally high exchange rate. And besides, we should probably be comparing euros directly to Apple's prices in euros, which, best I can tell, are in fact bigger numbers than their USD prices—the baseline offerings are listed at €1,449 and €1,679 (vs $1,299 and $…

$500 gross. $6000 gross. "u abused" should be "excluding a very small percentage abused by their employers".

And Romania has a fixed 10% tax rate so the higher you go, the more you benefit from it. So IT folks keep a lot of their salary.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#170

Post by slrz »

smoldesu wrote: post #86
stefan_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M1 still does DDC, it just doesn't end up exposing the raw bus to software. Which is a perfectly reasonable decision.

Why didn't they abstract it, or create a stripped/safe userland option to replace it? If I'm relying on a Mac for work, I can't have them removing essential features from my computer in a simple upgrade. Maybe MacOS needs semantic versioning, or at least some level of communication with the end user about compatibility.

This was never an intended feature. If I understand the article correctly, they were using an undocumented ("private") API which happened to stop working.
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