Ambient light sensor

Do those of you with ambient light sensors use them? I find that on my D430, plugged in, it's always too dark unless I shine a flashlight on it or put it next to the window. Is this because of the power settings?

 

I don't use it. It's gimmicky and usually doesn't set the brightness anywhere near where I'd want it.

 

I kind of use them in both my M6400 and my M4500, but, in my experience, these things are quite flaky. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't.

The one in the M4500 seems to work alright most of the time, although it sometimes can't quite decide what brightness to choose, and then changes back and forth between brightness levels.

On the M6400, the sensor may work after the first cold boot, but typically stops working after a reboot, or depending on the ambient light on boot, or the phase of the moon, or whatever... I had talked to a Dell technician about this, but they seem to have no clue at all. In the M6400, this is one of those useless features that could be nice, but simply don't work in any useful way. Just like the fingerprint reader...

 

I like it on my E6410, seems to work well on a setting of adjusted +2.

 

How do you adjust it +2?

 

I turned mine off. I find it often makes the screen brightness flicker under certain types of lights and it's very annoying. I just prefer to set it manually (or have a preset with the power plan I'm using). Debian does a reasonable job of this anyway.

 

The Ambient Light Sensor on my E6500 works well.
I am not sure how you configure it though, I have been looking for how.

Correction: DCP Dell ControlPoint System manager* is what is needed.

 

Usually, enabling the ALS dims my screen, so I use it as a quick way to dim the screen...pretty handy. But other than that, I usually set a fixed brightness for my screen.