This is a simple daemon that makes X11's standard display power management work on Raspberry Pi. It polls the X server for the current DPMS state and toggles the VideoCore HDMI output accordingly.
Note: with modern firmware this tool is mostly unnecessary. You can
achieve a similar effect by enabling native DPMS support by inserting
hdmi_blanking=1 in /boot/config.txt. However, unlike the native
support, this tool disables the framebuffer completely, saving some ~200
mW of power on the Pi while the display is powered off.
The following PiPy packages are required:
- sh - Raspbian package
python-sh - xpyb - Raspbian package
python-xpyb
Also, the tvservice and vcgencmd programs are required. These
are typically installed in /opt/vc/bin along with other VideoCore
control utilities.
Standard setuptools installation:
- for the current user:
./setup.py install --user - globally:
sudo ./setup.py install
Make sure that tvservice and vcgencmd are in path and run:
vcdpmsd &. Typically you might want to include this in your X
session startup script. To stop the program, kill the process with
SIGTERM.
The following options are provided:
-d,--display: The X display to poll. Defaults to$DISPLAY.-i,--interval: The DPMS polling interval in seconds. Defaults to 1.
To check that everything works, run xset dpms force off. The display
should now turn off. Press a key and the display should be restored. If
the monitor turns on but the screen stays blank, you may have to change
to another virtual terminal and back (typically Ctrl+Alt+F1,
Ctrl+Alt+F7). Please report if this happens.
- Use
libvchostifdirectly instead oftvservice. Currently not feasible becauselibvchostifis usually only distributed as a static library. - Use
xcffibinstead ofxpyb. Not reasonable untilxcffibis included in Raspbian.
Bugs, suggestions, pull requests etc. can be reported on the project's site at https://github.com/lealanko/vcdpmsd
This program is distributed under the MIT license, included in the file
LICENSE.
Lauri Alanko <[email protected]>