Request: Ability to turn the fingerprint LED off completely

[tangowithfoxtrot]

The fingerprint/power LED can be controlled thanks to the work done in #9. Being able to set this to "low" is very much appreciated, but it would be nice to have to option to turn it off completely.

Is disabling the LED completely possible?

[JohnAZoidberg]

That's an interesting idea.
But one of the purposes of the power button LED is to let you know whether the system is awake or asleep.

When the system is asleep/suspended the power button LED shows a breathing animation. If it's always off, you can't distinguish between the system being asleep or just screen off.

Please help me understand the reason and situation in which you'd like to have the LED turned off completely. Maybe we can figure out a good solution.

[tangowithfoxtrot]

The reason I'd like to have the LED completely off is that in the dark, even low brightness is pretty distracting and un-easy on my eyes, particularly when using dark themes or watching movies, where you generally don't want other sources of light interfering with your viewing experience. I usually disable the keyboard backlight as well in those situations, so having a light that can't be disabled there is a bit of a bummer.

The suspend situation you described is definitely a trade-off though. For me, it's one I'd be willing to make, as it makes my general usage much more pleasant, and my laptop is set to wake from suspend when I open the lid, so I don't have to worry about the indicator being a source of truth for that. I figure that mostly anyone using the input module CLIs would be pretty aware of any configurations that they've done in that regard and adapt their expectations for how the light behaves accordingly.

Either way, thanks for your response and consideration!

[tangowithfoxtrot]

Alternatively, if an "off" mode is considered to be too niche of a request, maybe offer an "ultra-low" mode that illuminates the LED at the lowest possible value it can be while still being on. This would be a compromise for me, as I'd still like to remove any extraneous distractions from the screen when using it in low-light environments, but it's an improvement.

Another alternative might be to allow adjusting by percentage values and letting people set it to 0%, but I'm not sure if the underlying firmware supports that or how much additional work would be involved in making that work.

[JohnAZoidberg]

We will introduce a new ultra-low option in the BIOS settings and also allow you to set it to a custom percentage down to 1%.

[JohnAZoidberg]

We will introduce a new ultra-low option in the BIOS settings and also allow you to set it to a custom percentage down to 1%.

Ultra low will be 7% PWM, it's the lowest that still has a nice breathing animation in suspend.

[tangowithfoxtrot]

Thanks for the updates and considering my request!

Is the code that controls what the minimum-allowed brightness something that I can change myself, or is that part of the UEFI firmware itself? I assume if it's the latter, it would be controlled by code that I do not have access to?

1% seems like it'd be minimally distracting in dark viewing scenarios, but I'm less sure about 7%. It would be nice if I could set that to a value lower than 7% (or maybe even off), even if I have to fork and build myself.

[JohnAZoidberg]

See #85, as I mentioned, you'll be able to manually anything inbetween 1%-100% brightness.
As previously it's overriden by the BIOS during boot, so you an create a startup script in linux.

Or you could use the UEFI version of this tool and run it during boot by your bootloader.

Or you could (already) modify and build your own EC firmware: https://github.com/frameworkComputer/embeddedcontroller
But that's obviously the riskiest choice, flashing your EC firmware.
If that's broken, you need special hardware to recover your firmware and unbrick your system.

[tangowithfoxtrot]

Ah okay. Thanks for clarifying. I didn't know there was a distinction between the "ultra-low" option in the UEFI and the actual minimum-allowed brightness you can set manually. As long as the framework_tool CLI can set it to anything between 1 and 100%, that's perfect!

Thanks again!

[tripplehelix]

Not able to set the 7040 Series Framework13 BIOS 03.07 fingerprint light to ultra-low.

[ERROR] EC Response Code: InvalidParameter

Am I too quick, and it's not available yet?

Also, --fp-brightness does nothing, just get InvalidVersion.

[JohnAZoidberg]

It needs updated bios that's not available yet