[eschulte]

If you happen to have a /sys/class/backlight/acpi-video0/brightness file on your system (e.g., linux laptop). Here's a light weight and easy to customize option.

First make this file writable.

    chmod o+w /sys/class/backlight/acpi-video0/brightness

Then add something like the following to your crontab. I'm constantly doing this manually, and never thought to crontab it until this article.

    0 17 * * * echo 14 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 18 * * * echo 13 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 19 * * * echo 12 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 20 * * * echo 11 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 21 * * * echo 10 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 22 * * * echo  9 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 23 * * * echo  8 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 00 * * * echo  7 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 05 * * * echo 12 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 06 * * * echo 13 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 07 * * * echo 14 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
    0 08 * * * echo 15 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightnes

Note: 15 is the max brightness for me, not sure if that is standard, just cat the file to see your current level of brightness.