Clearer night mode settings and day/night brightness control

Before we fix this; Im thinking of getting rid of this whole night mode, bc it's going against doing these kind of things inside Home assistant, just like how you would dim a light via an automation, you would be able to "dim" the screen with an automation, instead of having an "extra" timer inside the screen itself? does that make sense?

I do find it usefull to set it for the display. Adding an automation for it would require extra steps.

The ESPControl project has quite an elegant implementation for the brightness setting including an automatic one based on your local sunrise and sunset time: https://jtenniswood.github.io/espcontrol/features/backlight

Check, i will look into that!

Thanks for the report! I looked into it, and night mode is doing what it was built to do, but I can see why it looks broken. The name promises more than it does.

Night mode only changes the screen while it is idle. It never dims a screen you are using. The idea was that when you walk up to the screen and tap it, you should be able to read it properly, day or night. Night mode is for the moments nobody is looking: a panel in a hallway or bedroom shouldn't light up the room at 3 AM.

Here is how it plays out, with night from 22:00 to 07:00 and a night brightness of 10%:

• You use the screen at 23:00: it runs at your normal Brightness, for example 100%.
• You leave it alone at 23:00: after the Standby after time runs out, it dims to the night brightness (10%) instead of the normal Standby brightness.
• You tap it again: it goes straight back to full Brightness so you can read it, then dims to 10% again once it is idle.
• Daytime idle: it uses the normal Standby brightness.

In short, the night brightness takes the place of the standby brightness between the start and end time. Two things can make it look like nothing happens:

1. Auto standby is off. Then the screen never goes idle, so night mode never kicks in. Turn Auto standby on under Brightness in the screen's settings.
2. Night and standby brightness are close. The defaults are 20% for standby and 10% for night, and on the 4-inch Guition that step is hard to see. Try 0% for night to check it works: the screen should go dark once idle during the night hours.

If you would rather have the screen dimmer at night while you use it, that is a fair wish, and it is the part your ESPControl link covers with separate day and night levels. I am looking into how that could work here. Either way, the settings should say more clearly that night mode is about the idle screen.

Got a screen running? Tell others which board you have and what works on the Tessera website. It helps everyone pick a screen that works.

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Same screen, Guition 4" ESP32-S3-4848S040 and I had thought night mode did not work for me until I saw your last reply @MaxGramser.

I had set Night Mode to dim to 20% after 10:00pm, but it remained at 100% brightness all night and all day. But after reading your comment, I realized Night Mode requires Auto standby on to function.

Essentially I want my screen to be 100% at all times during the day, no standby dimming, and then 20% at night. The workaround is to set Auto standby on and Standby brightness to 100%. But the fix should be a note under Night Mode that it requires Auto standby to be on in order for Night Mode to function correctly.