On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Eric Timme wrote:
> I'd like to detect when the monitor is physically shut off by a user; I was
> hoping that DPMS would be the solution to my quest, but after doing xset
> +dpms and ensuring dpms is in the monitor section of my XF86Config (xfree
> 4.2.0 or thereabouts) it still doesn't report the state of the monitor
> correctly if I do a sleep 10; xset q , physically turning off the monitor
> after I hit enter. I can issue "xset dpms force standby" and it will go to
> standby, and "xset dpms force off", which will cause it to flicker off, then
> come back on about a second later of it's own volition, but I'm still no
> closer to a resolution of my problem =(
DPMS doesn't detect when your monitor is shut off; it turns it off when
the X server believes that you are doing nothing.
Typing "sleep 10 ; xset dpms force off" should turn your monitor
to a very low power state, and turn it back on again when you move
the mouse or press a key.
If it is coming back on more quickly there is a problem with the
moniter, the graphics card, the X server or the driver.
Since xset dpms force standby works, I doubt that the problem is in the
X server or the graphics card. Which monitor and X driver are you using ?
---
You might be able to use DDC to tell when the monitor is switched off.
At present XFree86 only uses DDC at start up, but there are several
stand-alone ddc-based config tools which can ask the monitor to describe
itself (ddcprobe and ddcxinfo are two that I know about).
You might be able to use the output from one of those to determine whether
the monitor is on or off, but I see 3 problems:
1. if DDC isn't working the monitor will appear to be off,
2. using these tools often blanks the screen, so the user could
be distracted by them, and
3. the DDC spec requires that graphics card supplies enough power
for the monitor to reply even when turned off, so you can't
even assume that the monitor is on if you get a reply.
--
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna
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