Scheduled screen dimming with mouse interrupt not working

Question

I have the official raspberry pi 7" touch screen and I'm struggling to get my python script to reset the screen brightness when I touch the screen.

I've setup a service that calls my brightness_automation.py script (I followed some steps from here, Automated brightness control for the Raspberry Pi), and the service dims/brightens the screen fine based off the time, but my code to set the brightness back to 255 (until the next scheduled run to check against the time) doesn't seem to have any effect.

Is s.run() preventing the while loop from ever running, or am I utilising InputDevice from evdev incorrectly?

brightness_automation.py

#! /usr/bin/python3

import sched, time
from datetime import datetime
from evdev import InputDevice
from select import select

s = sched.scheduler(time.time, time.sleep)
dev = InputDevice('/dev/input/event0')

def set_brightness(brightness):
  file = open("/sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness", "w")
  file.write(str(brightness))
  file.close()

def check_brightness(sc):
  now = datetime.now()
  time = (now.hour * 100) + now.minute

  if time < 830 or time > 2000:
    set_brightness(10)
  else:
    set_brightness(255)

  sc.enter(10, 1, check_brightness, (sc,))

s.enter(10, 1, check_brightness, (s,))
s.run()

while True:
  r,w,x = select([dev], [], [])
  for event in dev.read():
    if event.code == 8:
      set_brightness(10)
    elif event.code == 272:
      set_brightness(10)
    elif event.code == 273:
      set_brightness(10)

Answer 1

s.run() was blocking the the while loop below from running, so I used multiprocessing to ensure the scheduler and the code for detecting mouse events could run in parallel.

I also changed the method of detecting mouse events to use dev.read_loop() and used multiprocessing.Value to ensure the variables could be shared between the two processes.

Here is my finished code for anyone who is looking to achieve something similar. It's not perfect by any means; if you touch the screen and the scheduler runs straight after it has no effect, but this is good enough for what I needed:

#! /usr/bin/python3

import sched, throttle, time
from datetime import datetime
from evdev import InputDevice
from select import select
from multiprocessing import Process, Value


# This method calls itself and fades between the current brightness and the target
# brightness
def fade_brightness(check_brightness, target_brightness):
  if current_brightness.value != target_brightness.value:
    if current_brightness.value > target_brightness.value:
      current_brightness.value -= 1
    else:
      current_brightness.value += 1

    file = open("/sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness", "w")
    file.write(str(current_brightness.value))
    file.close()

    time.sleep(0.01)

  if current_brightness.value != target_brightness.value:
    fade_brightness(current_brightness, target_brightness)


# This method is what sets the target brightness and kicks off a fade between the
# current brightness and target brightness. It uses the throttle package
# (https://pypi.org/project/throttle/) to ensure this isn't run repeatedly when
# mouse events are triggered
@throttle.wrap(10, 1)
def set_brightness(brightness, current_brightness, target_brightness):
  target_brightness.value = brightness

  fade_brightness(current_brightness, target_brightness)


# This method checks whether the screen should be dimmed by default. Here it is set
# to dim the screen if the current time is before 8:30 am or after 10:00 pm
def check_brightness(sc, current_brightness, target_brightness):
  now = datetime.now()
  time = (now.hour * 100) + now.minute

  if time < 830 or time > 2200:
    set_brightness(10, current_brightness, target_brightness)
  else:
    set_brightness(255, current_brightness, target_brightness)

  sc.enter(10, 1, check_brightness, (sc, current_brightness, target_brightness))


# This method sets up the scheduler which will call the check_brightness method 
def scheduled_brightness(current_brightness, target_brightness):
  s = sched.scheduler(time.time, time.sleep)
  s.enter(10, 1, check_brightness, (s, current_brightness, target_brightness))
  s.run()


# This method sets up the event listener for any mouse event
def pointer_events(current_brightness, target_brightness):
  dev = InputDevice('/dev/input/event0')

  for event in dev.read_loop():
    set_brightness(255, current_brightness, target_brightness)


if __name__=='__main__':
  file = open("/sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness", "r")

  # Set the current brightness to match what's in the brightness file
  current_brightness = Value('i', int(file.read()))
  target_brightness = Value('i', 255)

  p1 = Process(target=scheduled_brightness, args=(current_brightness, target_brightness))
  p1.start()
  p2 = Process(target=pointer_events, args=(current_brightness, target_brightness))
  p2.start()