Dim the laptop screen.

I have a laptop and will be spending a lot of time running it off a power inverter in my van.
When the laptop is running on it's own battery the screen dims to use less power.
But when running off the inverter the screen uses the full brightness.

Is there some code that will let you set the screen to the lower power setting even when the comp thinks it's running on house current?

Is there a particular reason you want to use code?

You can set it via Control Panel (under "Power Options" I think).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by si_the_geek

Is there a particular reason you want to use code?

You can set it via Control Panel (under "Power Options" I think).

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I've looked there, there's only an option to turn off the monitor after x minutes.
I would like to be able to toggle the dimming of the screen.

I don't know about you, but my laptop came with hot keys to control that .... what you need to do is set the brightness when it's plugged in... when it becomes unplugged, it'll switch to the "dim" mode... when you plug it back it, it should remember the dimness setting from the last time it was plugged in and restore it.

-tg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by techgnome

I don't know about you, but my laptop came with hot keys to control that .... what you need to do is set the brightness when it's plugged in... when it becomes unplugged, it'll switch to the "dim" mode... when you plug it back it, it should remember the dimness setting from the last time it was plugged in and restore it.

-tg

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I hadn't thought of that one, there are function keys for setting the screen brightness.

Thanks for the help!


I'm leaving this open for now, it still could be handy to have code for doing it.

You can do it using sendmessage. here is an example

something like this... needs little bit of tweaking. this code puts the monitor off...

Code:

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Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias "SendMessageA" _
(ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, _
lParam As Any) As Long

Private Const SC_MONITORPOWER = &HF170&
Private Const WM_SYSCOMMAND = &H112

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  Call SendMessage(Me.hWnd, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, ByVal 2&)
End Sub

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Nice Koolsid, as usual.