Automatic brightness control of monitor in windows 10

[Simon]

I would like to have the brightness of my monitors change automatically over the day. In the morning the room is lit, by the afternoon the sun shines in, then the sun sets and it's um, rather dark. I cannot possibly have one setting that will deal with all of these. I am either straining to see what is on the screen or getting a headache from a bright monitor for 2/3 of the day.

Laptops have this licked, how do I do the same on a PC? I looked for a program that will use a webcam but apart from a couple of half arsed starts that stalled before becoming a proper program. I looked for an ambient light sensor but you cannot get these.

Surely this is not so hard? Do I actually have to hack the monitors themselves?

[DiTBho]

I looked for an ambient light sensor but you cannot get these

why cannot you get these?

[Simon]

I looked for an ambient light sensor but you cannot get these

why cannot you get these?

I will never be able to get "these" as they are a non tangible object unlike an ambient light sensor....

[TimFox]

He quoted your sentence in which "ambient light sensor" is the antecedent of "these".  Seems clear to me.

[Whales]

I can't help with the ambient light sensor part, but I can help with changing desktop monitor brightness from your PC.  I really miss the monitors that had physical brightness wheels on them, OSDs are a pain to toggle through.

DDC/CI is the comms method that some desktop monitors support to change brightness.  I've tried in Linux before, only some of my monitors supported it.

It looks like there are some Windows programs that might help, eg https://github.com/emoacht/Monitorian

[SiliconWizard]

Can also take a look at this: https://github.com/xanderfrangos/twinkle-tray

[Simon]

Yea those are one option. Makes it easier than constantly opening the graphic driver and changing both or going through the monitors menu.

[Simon]

I just don't understand why even microsoft can't provide this functionality as part of windows, if you have a webcam, bingo. I don't know how it's done but laptops do it. As soon as you don't have a laptop existing features are removed like having the power settings icon on the taskbar so that I can alter the performance as and when I like.

[SiliconWizard]

I personally find automatic brightness adjustment very annoying. It's fine on mobile phones, but on a computer? That would just annoy me. Just being able to quickly adjust it with simple hotkeys is much better IMHO, and I think the software above allows this.

Also just a thought - but if your work environment has such a wide lighting difference depending on the hour of day, that may be a problem in itself. Too much direct sunlight isn't that good, and too little artifical lighting when there is little or no sunlight isn't good either. So I would try and fix this first, before toying with screen brightness. This is just me though.

[Simon]

Sunlight is so powerful , artificial light cannot compete, even with curtains drawn the brightness needs adjusting. You easily forget the huge range our eyes can deal with.

[cgroen]

I use the windows setting "night light" (not sure what the name is in English version, in Danish it is "nattelys"  )
I set  the time it should kick in, it adjusts the tone of the screens, works at least for me.
Its in the settings here:

[Simon]

It's not the colour temperature, it's the lux

[cgroen]

It's not the colour temperature, it's the lux

I know, but when windows changes to the night setting it makes a big difference (at least to me). Have you tried it ?

[Simon]

No it's not a solution. as I explained, in the morning the sun is the other side of the house, so the room has good daylight lighting. In the afternoon the sun swings around and shines directly through the windows so bright that the monitors now appear faint, then the sun sets and it gets dark and the monitors need turning right down again.... this is not a day night situation.

[Rick Law]

Sunlight is so powerful , artificial light cannot compete, even with curtains drawn the brightness needs adjusting. You easily forget the huge range our eyes can deal with.

Cameras use a lens-hood to deal with the glare in that situation.  Lens hood generally is flared (smaller diameter at the lens-end) so it doesn't reduce the field of view.

You can try making a custom hood for your sensor with that concept specifically to reduce the sensor's field of view.  Get a small section of pvc water pipe.  Glue the sensor to one end of the pipe with sensor pointing at the other end.  Fully cover that sensor end.  Now the pipe act as a hood and would only be sensitive to light at where the open-end of the pipe is pointing.

To make it fancy, you can add a slightly larger tube and have the two tubes coaxial.  Now by adjusting the overlap of the two coax tube, you can control the "field of view" of the sensor.

[Simon]

I could do all of that if I could get the damn sensor. There is no direct light and no flaring, just lots of light.

[Ian.M]

So what's the problem?
USB ambient light sensors are readily available, so if you've got DDC/CI capable monitors, its just a matter of scripting.

You may also wish to consider getting some translucent vertical strip window blinds, and a remote control motor module for them so you can automate blocking direct sunlight while still allowing in as much daylight as possible.

[Simon]

Actually there are precious few sensors and I did not find any while I put ambient light sensor in the search but the dummer "usb light sensor" does produce a couple of results.

eh? scripting? come again?

[olkipukki]

I would like to have the brightness of my monitors change automatically over the day. In the morning the room is lit, by the afternoon the sun shines in, then the sun sets and it's um, rather dark. I cannot possibly have one setting that will deal with all of these. I am either straining to see what is on the screen or getting a headache from a bright monitor for 2/3 of the day.

....I looked for an ambient light sensor but you cannot get these.

Surely this is not so hard? Do I actually have to hack the monitors themselves?

There're plenty of monitors with built-in ambient light sensor 

[Bassman59]

I just don't understand why even microsoft can't provide this functionality as part of windows,

oh, who knows.

Maybe for the same reason it took them FIFTEEN YEARS to support USB Audio Class 2.0 in Windows, even as Apple and Linux supported it pretty much right after ratification.

Maybe for the same reason Windows still doesn't have a backup feature that works like Time Machine on the Mac.

[Simon]

I know, I've installed ubuntu