Task action to unblank software remote

acheslow · Post by **acheslow** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:35 am

Unless I've missed something I don't see a way to programmatically 'wake up' a remote that has its screen blanked.

Thanks,

Alan

Post by **ScottBot** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:46 am

I've actually not figured out how to do that

You can open a pop-up panel and then close it right away. That might do it.

I have a PPC that will not revive from the sleeping video mode unless a button is pressed.

I have a tablet that will revive from the sleeping video mode, but will not turn the backlight on unless the screen is pressed.

acheslow · Post by **acheslow** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 2:51 pm

On my Simpad I can't get anything to turn the screen back on (and keep it on) unless I touch the screen or a button. Also, I noticed that if I don't hide the taskbar that it continues to show even when the remote itself is blanked -- only the part of the screen above the taskbar blanks. Is this really saving power by turning off part of the screen or is it just displaying black and not saving power? If so then I'll just not blank the screen and not have to worry about turning it back on.

Thanks,Alan

Post by **ScottBot** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:03 pm

Alan,

I noticed from the client trace that you sent that the Simpad doesn't support video power management. This means that the software can't tell the device to turn off the power to the screen, while everything else is still running. It's really the same feature you see in Windows when you setup your screen saver to power off the monitor after so many minutes.

If the video power management isn't supported, all the client does is throw a black window up to cover the entire screen. It may save a little power, but the idea is that it hopefully cuts down the radiance a bit when in a dark room.

It sounds like the task bar is set to be 'always on top', so it is still obscuring the blanking window. I can probaby try and create the blanking window as a topmost window and that may cover the task bar. You may want to try specifying in the client config to keep the client on top. It may make a differenece. You could also try setting the Task bar to not always be on top, or to auto-hide.

Question: Is there a way for you to manually turn off the display of the Simpad without putting it into standby?

acheslow · Post by **acheslow** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:53 pm

Thanks Scott, I don't know of any way to turn off just the screen without going into suspend mode. There is a 'Device Settings' application that will let me dim or brighten the backlight but not turn it off entirely. I'll see if I can find any other software that might let me access this function but I'm guessing it is a hardware limitation.

Thanks, Alan

acheslow · Post by **acheslow** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 5:20 pm

Just a quick update - I found an application called ScreenOff that is supposed to just turn off the screen but when I ran it it said my device does not support the application. Then I tried PHM Screensaver PowerToy which did 'blank' the entire screen but I think it just made it black and kept the backlight on. I may decide to just keep my screen on all the time if I can't unblank it.

Thanks, Alan

Post by **ScottBot** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 7:43 pm

That's what I was afraid of. It sounds like the apps you found try and do the same thing the client does with the video power APIs.

I had a tablet once that didn't support the video power APIs, but had a separate app that ran in the taskbar that you could turn the display off with. It was their own non-standard method of turning the video off. I wrote special code in the client to send a windows message to the app in the task bar just to turn off the display!