Feature request: dim screen

[adrianmoisey]

Hi

Just a feature request, close if you don't like it or think it's unrealistic.
I'd like EmulationStation to dim the entire screen after x seconds of being idle. Not sure on the number, but may be 60 seconds.

[acandido]

It would be neat if this could be tied to issue 43 and dim the screen as well as stopping the redrawing that is causing the CPU usage; would be nice to have 0% CPU usage from ES while idle so we don't have to worry about turning the box off.

[Aloshi]

Hmm, that's actually a really good idea acandido!

I've unfortunately been tied up with school and other projects as of late and haven't worked on ES...but next time I get the urge to add a feature, I'll probably try doing this.

[Liquidream]

👍 This gets my vote too!

[kwadroke]

If implemented, please make this configurable with the option to enable/disable and the amount of idle time before dimming.

[Aloshi]

Finally got off my butt and added this. 😄

The default behavior is to sleep after 30 seconds, which entails dimming the screen by drawing a darkened rectangle over the screen once and then literally sleep()ing in 1-second intervals until a joystick hat/button or key is pressed/released. You can change the time with --dimtime [seconds].

I've only been able to test on a virtual machine, so if there are any problems, let me know. Off the top of my head, I bet it'll enter sleep if you play a game for more than the sleep time...if that happens (and it's annoying), please open an issue or post here.

[robertomurta]

Hi Aloshi.
I don't know if is too long for a possible reopening of the issue, or another issue, been using emulationstation for a week, on a macbook pro (intel core2) with debian and notice the 4% of cpu usage when idle (blank or dim), and CPU clock speed is at max all the time (it get hot and fan at max). It's been a issue since I also use as personal server, and want to use emulationstation as main interface.
I think the problem is the cpu speed that is not allowed to step down, it would be really nice a lower cpufreq for quieter server when not in use.