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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

#171

Post by mikecarlton »

colordrops wrote: post #46

Funny, I just started playing with DDC a few days ago. I've got a work (Mac) and a personal laptop (Dell XPS with Linux) that I like switching between. I had a thunderbolt hub, but was getting tired of moving the cable back and forth, and it was also unreliable on the Mac, causing it to heat up and slow down on occasion. I ended up just buying a pure USB hub with a switch, and running a persistent polling bash script…

I wrote a little script to do this automatically when your bluetooth keyboard switches between computers. I just updated it to work with m1 Macs based on the recent work.

See https://github.com/mikecarlton/bluekvm

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#172

Post by almostdigital »

alin23 wrote: post #108
almostdigital wrote: post #40

This seemed neat so I installed Lunar to try out on my M1 MacBook Air with a LG HDR display connected over HDMI. After launching the app my system started freezing so bad I had a hard time closing the app, inputs unresponsive for 30 sec then active for 1 sec to become unresponsive again. I figured I'd try to launch it with my monitor unplugged and worked fine, but after plugging in my monitor again it doesn't connect…

I can’t say for sure what the problem is in your case, but it’s definitely not a problem in Lunar. All the app does is call a macOS function called IOAVServiceWriteI2C to send a standard DDC message to the monitor (something like “set brightness to 30”) In your case, either the dongle or the monitor reacts unexpectedly to that message. What should happen is that the dongle should simply forward that message as it is…

I've tinkered around a bit and found that with another dongle that uses displayport everything works fine. Changing volume and brightness from the keyboard not having to fiddle with monitor menus is a godsend :)

The dongle that's having problems is a "Selore&S-Global USB-C HDMI + DP" if that's something you want to keep on file.

Thanks for the detailed response and all your work making the app possible!

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#173

Post by smoldesu »

slrz wrote: post #170
smoldesu wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every API is undocumented on MacOS, what do you want them to do? How are you supposed to discern between zombie XNU code and Good LTS Apple Compliant code?

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#174

Post by fighterpilot »

alin23 wrote: post #162
fighterpilot wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks but that URL isn't working for me?

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#175

Post by alin23 »

throwanem wrote: post #161
alin23 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> reverse-biased LED with a Darlington-pair amplifier

that's clever! I knew LEDs can be used as sensors but I never had the time to try it.

Yeah, I don't know about DDC via the Mac Min HDMI. Weird things are happening with that port.

Some users report it doesn't work at all, some say their monitor crashes when DDC is sent through the port. One user even had the weird issue where sending DDC through the USB-C port to his Thunderbolt monitor causes the message to also be sent to the monitor connected via HDMI.

I'm trying to find a solution but these seems more like bugs in Apple's implementations of the video driver and we'll have to wait for those to get fixed in Monterey.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#176

Post by alin23 »

fighterpilot wrote: post #174
alin23 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks but that URL isn't working for me?

I just clicked on it and it works. But here it is in a shorter form in case the length is the problem: https://tinyurl.com/yzck7y9v

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#177

Post by fighterpilot »

alin23 wrote: post #176
fighterpilot wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks but that URL isn't working for me?

I just clicked on it and it works. But here it is in a shorter form in case the length is the problem: https://tinyurl.com/yzck7y9v

Hmm, I clicked on both links on both my phone (4G) and laptop (wifi) and got a 404 error each time. Perhaps it's not publicly accessible, and only accessible when logged in to your Github account. Strange.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#178

Post by michelb »

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

Why bother? They may change their mind later on and then what? Apple will come out with their own display that will just work out of the box with their own API.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#179

Post by alin23 »

fighterpilot wrote: post #177
alin23 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just clicked on it and it works. But here it is in a shorter form in case the length is the problem: https://tinyurl.com/yzck7y9v

Hmm, I clicked on both links on both my phone (4G) and laptop (wifi) and got a 404 error each time. Perhaps it's not publicly accessible, and only accessible when logged in to your Github account. Strange.

I’m sorry, it seems I forgot to make the repository public.

Both links should be working now

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#180

Post by howolduis »

6a74 wrote: post #81
howolduis wrote: post #64

$99 to receive an update? sounds like a scam...

That $99 price is for the Sketch program. The creator (Alin) just wanted a subscription model similar to it. The pro version of Lunar is $23 for a year of updates and support.

I was being sarcastic
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