An Open-Source Hardware Ambient Light Sensor Is Brought Up
GNOME developer Richard Hughes who is responsible for a lot of work on open-source software as well as being the engineer behind the open-source ColorHug color calibrating device is now looking at the possibility of making a USB ambient light sensor that's open-source. A few days ago I wrote about Richard's brainstorming over making a SD card based random number generator to provide fresh entropy to the system, but he's received a lot of feedback with similar devices that have already been developed and are too Linux/open-source friendly.
The latest OpenHardware idea that Hughes is toying with would be creating a USB-based ambient light sensor. The device would test for ambient light levels and be more efficient than the common hacked about approach of using a web camera as a light sensor. This proposed device would be low-power and would be a mini-dongle for measuring the ambient light level on low-end laptops. Compared to existing ambient light sensors, this one would be open-source friendly and designed for the Linux desktop needs.
Having this power efficient ambient light sensor, the GNOME desktop (and other desktop environments) could respond better to lighting changes in the room for setting an appropriate screen brightness and ideally reducing the power consumption of the laptop.
More details on this latest possible project by Richard Hughes can be found via his GNOME.org blog site.
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