Dimming A Control Page On An iPad Using A 50% Screen Graphic

I'm Sheltering in place at home with lot's of time to work on automation during the Corona pandemic

My wife complains that the iPad displaying a Control Page in our bedroom is to bright at night when set for daytime viewing.
The built-in adaptive brightness adjustment does not have enough range between daytime and night time brightness levels.
I believe there's no way to remotely control the brightness of the iPad itself.

So my proposed solution is to create a 50% (or some other amount of transparency) black or grey .png image in PhotoShop with the same Pixel dimensions as the iPad.
The Idea is to display this image as an overlay on top of all of the other control page graphics by changing a variable.

But I have some questions:
Is there a way to assure that the screen will always be the foremost graphic when it's displayed?
does anyone know a better way to accomplish my iPad Control Page dimming objective?

Thanks,

Mike

Sounds like a great idea to me. I’ve had the same issue. I’ll be anxious to see where this goes.


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This method should work.

Is there a way to assure that the screen will always be the foremost graphic when it's displayed?

If you make sure that the dimming image has the highest z-order value, it should always display on top of the other images.

Screen Shot 2020-03-25 at 5.50.11 AM.png (15.36 KiB) Viewed 3657 times

Would a touch penetrate the overlay?


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Would a touch penetrate the overlay?


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Unfortunately not. That might be a nice feature request though. An image that is visible but transparent to clicks.

But if I'm thinking about this right, you could make a click on the dimming image load another duplicate control page that is set to a very dark color scheme.

Thanks Dave for the suggestion. But where do I set the Z-order for an image?

Look in the upper right hand corner of the control page editing panel.

Got it! Shure'nuf. Never saw that before.

Thx Dave.... I'll let you know how the dimming thing works out.

Mike

You're welcome. Z-order is an absolute necessity if you want to build graphics like this:

Screen Shot 2020-03-25 at 3.21.46 PM.png (17.25 KiB) Viewed 3563 times

It's made up of I think 5 overlaid images:

• The frame
• The text
• The needle
• The "light"
• The bezel

EDIT: 6 images. I forgot the center button.

Dave,

OK, I give up. I have the edit z-order checkbox enabled. and I see little blue numbers after each displayed text variable and image. but for the life of me I can't see a way to change the x-order number. Are these numbers determined only by the order in which items are added to the control page or is there a more direct way to bring objects forward or send them back in the object layers stack as in other apps?

Thx

Mike

Ahh! I found it. A little red arrow that allows one to raise or lower the x-order number

Thanks,

Sounds like you've got it now.

The iPad screen dimming solution works flawlessly

Thanks for the support.

Glad you found a solution that works for you. I totally understand the importance of the SAF (spouse acceptance factor)!

Dave this may not be the thread to ask about this but I’m very interested in the gauge you created. Do you have a source for how to do this?


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