Is there a way to turn off the backlight without changing persistent settings?

[espruino-discuss2]

Posted at 2023-06-12 by Philip

I am working on an app where it makes sense to immediately turn off the LCD screen backlight after the user has touched the screen. I have found ways to do this, but only with side effects, so I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction. Here's what I've tried:

1. Bangle.setLCDPower(false) : This turns off the backlight temporarily like I want... but also turns off the sunlight-readable display forever unless I turn it back on. Not really what I want. Just want to hit the backlight.
2. Bangle.setLCDBrightness(0): This turns off the backlight! Yay! ... forever. Boooooo.

I am hoping to just say "Hey turn off the backlight right now, and otherwise continue operating like normal".

One possible solution I thought of, but seems a lot more hacky than it should be is:

const prev = Bangle.getOptions().backlightTimeout; // record current setting
Bangle.setOptions({backlightTimeout: 1}); // Timeout to 1ms
setTimeout(() => Bangle.setOptions({backlightTimeout: prev}), 100); // resume previous setting

Is that the best way to do this right now?

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2023-06-13 by @gfwilliams

Annoyingly as you point out, right now I don't think there is a way to do this directly - however normally turning the light off is controlled by the backlight timeout, so I think your solution is probably the best one for the moment...