Illuminated keyboard on ASUS U50VG laptop, backlight or led ?

[Alan Jenkins]

On 8/1/09, Corentin Chary <corentin.chary at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Danny Kukawka<danny.kukawka at web.de> wrote:
>> On Samstag, 1. August 2009, Corentin Chary wrote:
>>> Maybe just *:kbd_backlight . The naming scheme is vendor:color:name
>>> The problem is that hald-addon-generic-kbd-backlight is not merged
>>> upstream.
>>>
>>> So, hal mailing list is now CC'ed
>>> Is there any plan to merge hald-addon-generic-kbd-backlight ?
>>> Patch can be found here:
>>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2008-October/012361.html
>>
>> This patch is not needed. There is a generic addon for the leds subsystem
>> in
>> HAL.
>>
>> Check out:
>> http://people.freedesktop.org/~dkukawka/hal-spec-git/hal-spec.html#interface-device-leds
>>
>> If there is any problem with this addon, let me know.
>>
>> Danny
>
> It seems there is also a KeyboardBacklight interface which is what we
> want, but I didn't find how to use it
> without an addon (like addon-macbookpro-backlight).

But if you look at the methods, they are exactly the same, right?  I
think the idea is to use an FDI file to match our LED device (or
possibly create it as a hal device... I'm still really fuzzy on hal),
and then mark it as having the "keyboard_backlight" capability.

> Summary of the thread:
> Asus U50 provide a keyboard backlight, I didn't know how to expose
> that to userspace.
> Matthew told me that in Apples, the SMC driver expose the keyboard
> backlight as a led.
> Then Alan found hald-addon-generic-kbd-backlight to plug the led subsystem
> and
> org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.KeyboardBacklight interface.
>
> What we want to do is change the brightness when KEY_KBDILLUM* is pressed.
>
> I believe that we need a keyboard backlight addon that respond to
> KEY_KBDILLUM*
> and update the corresponding /sys/class/vendor:color:kbd_backlight.

Oops, thats not the addons job.  It's for something like the gnome
power manager.  It looks like g-p-m already picks up the device with a
"keyboard_backlight" capability, and react to keyboard brightness key
events.

Regards
Alan