Experimenting With Light on Apple Laptops

venkatg writes "Soon after Apple introduced sudden motion sensors in their PowerBooks in early 2005, Amit Singh had shown how these sensors can be used for creative purposes (covered by Slashdot earlier as Having Fun With PowerBook Motion Sensors and PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device). This time around Singh discusses 'Experimenting With Light' in a new article whereby by light he means the ambient light sensors and the illuminated backlight keyboard sensors in Apple's laptops. The article shows (source code is included) how one can measure ambient light and do things with it. It also shows things like how to get/set illuminated keyboard brightness and display brightness or do fade transitions of the keyboard lighting. So now that we have all these motion and light sensors under control, is there a MacBook discotheque in the works?"

Comments

The backlights have been on there for years.

[bellers]

The backlighting isn't something that was invented for the new Macbooks. It's been on the PPC-based powerbooks (that had no heat problem) for at least 2-3 years. Transferring it to the MacBookPros was pretty much a zero-engineering proposition.

Honestly, shut up until you know what you're talking about.

Re:How does the keyboard backlight work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The keyboard illumination does not allow for individual key lighting.

The mechanism is a mat of fiber-optic cables which are illuminated by just two leds, which also cannot be independantly controlled.