ThinkLight - programmatic control

[techcafe]

anyone know how to programmatically control the ThinkLight?  in other words, detect its operational state and toggle it ON/OFF, via software (preferably without having to install the bug-ridden On Screen Display utility).

a hypothetical example might look something like this:

C:\<somepath>\thinklight.exe -state

would return an %errorlevel% value of either 1 (ON) or 0 (OFF), which could then be used in conjunction with a simple batch script to enable/disable (toggle) the light.  the command to toggle the ThinkLight might be simply to run the 'thinklight.exe' utility without any parameters.  of course, the detection logic could also be incorporated into the thinklight utility itself, in which case, 'thinklight -ON' and 'thinklight -OFF' would enable & disable the light, regardless of its present state.

surely, someone out there must have coded a ThinkLight utility by now?

[andyP Retired SuperMod]

Sorry, AFAIK it's not possible. I believe it is a key combination which is controlled by BIOS.

[techcafe]

@andy - thanks for the followup.  "not possible" is a tad discouraging... it must be possible, given that the OSD itself programmatically controls the ThinkLight by scanning for the Fn-PgUp keycode and then toggling the light.  whether or not the functionality of the thinklight is done via the system BIOS is irrelevant.  the question remains, is it possible to determine the operational status of the thinklight, through software, like an ON/OFF bit that can be read from some hardware register, which could then be used to programmatically control the thinklight?  in theory, this shouldn't be difficult at all... i'm just surprisesd that it hasn't been done yet.

[techcafe]

apparently it can be done, controlling the ThinkLight via software, using a 'thinkpad-acpi' script... in Linux.

sigh... what are we lowly Windows serfs to do?  am i gonna have to code this thinklight gadget myself??

btw, programmatic control is already built-in to the ThinkVantage Mobility Centre, ie, the ThinkLight can be toggled ON/OFF by launching the mobility center and clicking on the ThinkLight button (the SMIIF & OSD drivers must be installed first tho)... so it shouldn't be difficult to add '-ThinkLightON/ThinkLightOFF' commandline switches to the mobility center executable, right?

this thinklight thing is mostly an academic exercise on my part, however, i can think of situations where software and/or event-triggered control of the ThinkLight could be useful, like automatically turning itself OFF/ON at certain times of the day/night, simply by creating an event in the Windows Task Scheduler.  or even a clickable ThinkLight applet, shortcut'd on a Desktop dock might be 'fun'

anyway, i can't be the only nerd out there who's thought about this... can i??

Message Edited by techcafe on 02-19-2009 02:40 PM

[hausman]

See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkLight

[techcafe]

yes, you beat me to it... i had already discovered the link you just posted, but forgot to embed it in my post.  thank you.  the article makes no mention of an actual windows utility (executable) that's available... but i'll have to take a closer look.

[techcafe · Accepted solution]

well wouldn't ya know it... in a thinkpads.com forum thread, i found a ThinkLight utility for Windows, coded by Arkadiusz Wahlig, to whom i'm about to send a nice thank you letter. it appears to be exactly what i was looking for.

now let's see if i can make this thing work with the Windows Scheduler

here's the internal help, etc for the ThinkLight.exe utility:

Usage:
  ThinkLight.exe <command> [args]
Commands:
  on - turns the ThinkLight ON
  off - turns the ThinkLight OFF
  toggle - toggles the current ThinkLight state
  blink <count> [speed]
        - blinks the ThinkLight <count> number of times,
        speed is number of blinks per second and defaults
        to 3

ThinkLight control utility
Version 1.01 (4.12.2008)
Copyright (c) 2008 Arkadiusz Wahlig

Note from Moderator: Removed AW's e-mail address.

Message Edited by JaneL on 02-19-2009 02:42 PM

[techcafe]

ooops, sorry about that... i should've removed the author's e-mail address first... my bad? :~{

[techcafe]

just a quick followup... Arkadiusz Wahlig's ThinkLight utility works GREAT in Windows XP (32bit OS), but is unsupported in Vista x64, because the thinklight executable is a 16bit app.  d'oh!  oh well, at least it works on my XP machine.  hopefully the author will compile a 64bit version of the thinklight utility in the future.