Asus Keyboard Backlight controller

I just got an Asus N56DP and installed Arch Linux on it. I was previously using Ubuntu but was having problems with Suspend/Resume crashing, running too hot, and crashing with the AMD Catalyst driver. With Arch Linux all of this seems to be working.

One feature my Dell Precision M4400 has that's kind of nice is that the keyboard backlight comes on automatically with keyboard activity, and then shuts off after a few seconds of idle time. With Arch Linux you can get some scripts that let you manually control the backlight, but there's nothing automated.

So, here's my program to control the backlight automatically. After you compile it, it needs to run as root to have permission to change the settings. (Or you could change the permissions on the backlight brightness file, to allow some other user to write it.)

The program monitors all keyboard activity, so it works regardless of whether you're on the console or running X. It sets the keyboard backlight proportionally to the screen backlight. Read the comments, you'll get it.

Compile as "gcc -O2 -o idlekbd idlekbd.c" and run it in the background, or arrange to have it run at bootup.

 

Thanks a lot for this code highlandsun. It also works on u31a.

 

Great, thanks for the feedback!