Q: How do I turn off the backlight or put the system to sleep if it hasn't been used for a while?
CE has an inactivity timer that you can use to put the system to sleep or to dim the backlight (saves power and prolongs backlight life). The timer is reset by user interaction (touch panel, keyboard, mouse and other user input).
You can change these settings in your system's ADSLOAD.REG file to meet your application's needs.
Note 1: Ethernet (wired 802.3 or wireless 802.11) connections continuously reset the activity timer, which will prevent these keys from working. Note 2: These keys were phased into CE builds in mid-2002 and may not be available in all CE builds.
The following is an excerpt from Bitsy ADSLOAD.REG(700111-1707C) that demonstrates the settings available. All values are in seconds, entered in hex (e.g. dword:3C is 60 seconds). 0=disabled.
;--------------------------------------------------------------------- ; System sleep: ; BattPowerOff timeout when on battery power ; ExtPowerOff timeout when on main power ; WakeupPowerOff time after wakeup to go back to sleep (usu. 0, disabled) ; ; Backlight: ; BatteryTimeout timeout when on battery ; ACTimeout timeout when on main power ;--------------------------------------------------------------------- [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power] "BattPowerOff"=dword:0 "ExtPowerOff"=dword:0 "WakeupPowerOff"=dword:0 ; [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Backlight] "BatteryTimeout"=dword:3C ; 1 minute "ACTimeout"=dword:258 ; 10 minutes ; [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Platform\Backlight] "BLightLevel4on"=dword:0 ; operating backlight level (0-FF) "BLightLevel4off"=dword:FF ; backlight level when "off" (0-FF)