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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

#51

Post by renaudg »

alufers wrote: post #6
unicornporn wrote: post #3

Very cool, had no idea this was even possible. Is there anything like this for Linux?

There is https://www.ddcutil.com/ It has a command line utility and a qt GUI. Unfortunately the GUI is a bit convoluted, because it exposes every option that you can change on the monitor. I once almost bricked my LG monitor, because I accidentally locked the hardware buttons on my monitor, via an undocumented manufacturer specific option. For gnome there is https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2645/brightness-cont…

> Unfortunately the GUI is a bit convoluted, because it exposes every option that you can change

Wow, color me surprised. That doesn't sound like a desktop Linux app at all :)

>I once almost bricked my LG monitor, because I accidentally locked the hardware buttons on my monitor, via an undocumented manufacturer specific option.

Reminds of the good old days of late 90s / early 2000s desktop Linux, when the wrong video timing settings in your XFree86 config could make your CRT monitor (almost literally) explode.

But I'm sure 2022 will be "the year of Linux on the desktop", finally :)

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#52

Post by frogpelt »

alin23 wrote: post #26
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

When I got my first job as a Junior Malware Researcher, I was earning $422 per month. That times 7 is exactly the cost of the MacBook Pro I got (1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) Yes, I live in Romania, and salaries have been increasing a bit but they're still a joke for junior devs.

Off topic a bit: Your website is one of the nicest I've seen in a long time.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#53

Post by vmladenov »

wil421 wrote: post #21
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

The resume on the blog says University of Lasi. Google returned something about Romania so is assume that’s where he is.

No need to assume. The third paragraph of the article says he lives in Romania

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#54

Post by GekkePrutser »

alin23 wrote: post #10
planetafro wrote: post #2

Amazing write-up! Your efforts are much appreciated. I have an Intel Mac Air with an external monitor and strongly feel that usability items like these are sorely underrated. Kudos for the great work in a seemingly closed ecosystem.

Thanks! Yes, it can be hard to let people know that an app like this actually exists. Some people don't even feel the need for such a thing and just stare hours at a time into a blinding 100% brightness panel when working at night time. I think that can cause macular degeneration much faster than just "not filtering blue light", but this is not as talked about so people don't think about its effects that much.

I agree, and for me the problem is also that newer screens won't even go down far enough because they optimize for max brightness as that looks better on the spec sheet.

Most of my monitors are way too bright at 0% at night. On my 4K I even need to work at 0% during the day and reduce contrast at night (which messes up colour depth).

And yeah the OSD controls are horrible.

I still work on a real VT520 CRT terminal sometimes and it amazes me how it can go from super bright to hardly readable in pitch dark. And has amazingly handy analog brightness/contrast knobs. Not all innovation is progress.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#56

Post by correct_horse »

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…

Display Data Channel generally doesn't work through dongles. I'm not really sure how usb-c dongles work (block diagram, etc.), so I don't know why this is the case.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#57

Post by wil421 »

vmladenov wrote: post #53
wil421 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resume on the blog says University of Lasi. Google returned something about Romania so is assume that’s where he is.

No need to assume. The third paragraph of the article says he lives in Romania

Thanks. It also explains the high price.

> living in a country like Romania means incredibly high prices on everything Apple.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#58

Post by [deleted] »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #43
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.

> Which is a perfectly reasonable decision Why is that "reasonable"? How does it ultimately benefit end-users when they can no-longer use userland software to control their monitor via DDC?

[deleted]

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#59

Post by stefan_ »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #43
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.

> Which is a perfectly reasonable decision Why is that "reasonable"? How does it ultimately benefit end-users when they can no-longer use userland software to control their monitor via DDC?

It's a raw bus? It's like an operating systems idea of a network stack being to hand all software raw ethernet access. It is an obvious concurrency disaster once you have more than one application trying to access it, the data transmitted and control handed over is entirely opaque to the operating system (god knows what monitor vendors sneak over DDC) and most importantly all of these are absurdly low level implementation details that are subject to change.

For all you know, they don't even need DDC beyond the initial EDID setup and multiplex the I2C hardware to do something else and can't physically provide this interface anymore.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#60

Post by YuccaGloriosa »

alin23 wrote: post #23
nixpulvis wrote: post #12

Does the gamma solution lower the power use like a proper brightness reduction? And if so, by the same amount? Did you ever attempt to reach out to Apple about how this should be implemented on the new kernel? I would hope there's some forum for this kind of question still.

Unfortunately no, Gamma doesnt reduce the power consumption of the LED backlight of the monitor. It may in fact increase power use a bit because rendering black pixels needs more energy to excite the crystals. I haven't contacted Apple because I don't think they are interested in implementing such a thing really. I've written more about why I think that here: https://lobste.rs/s/2zajeu/journey_controlling_external_mo…

I have a monitor that has "eco" mode, reducing the brightness. Is that a different DCC command or are they implementing a similar gamma reduction? If not could an eco mode be called, if indeed it is a industry wide standard for reducing energy usage?
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