Get monitor make and model and other info in human readable form
In Ubuntu's Monitor Preferences, it is identified as Viewsonic Corporation 16". How can I extract this human readable form?
That human readable form ("Viewsonic Corporation") does not come (directly) from your EDID:
Ubuntu uses gnome libraries underneath. libgnome-desktop decodes the edid and - via pnp-ids - converts the three-letter vendor ID ("VSC" in your particular case) into a pretty name for the display.
gnome-pnp-ids.c, line 51:
* Note: we now prefer to use data coming from hwdata (and shipped with gnome-desktop)*
On my system
grep VSC /usr/share/hwdata/pnp.ids
returns:
VSC ViewSonic Corporation
That aside, additional information can be extracted from the EDID, namely from the descriptor blocks. From the same wikipedia link:
Descriptor blocks. Detailed timing descriptors, in decreasing preference order. After all detailed timing descriptors, additional descriptors are permitted:
- Monitor range limits (required)
- ASCII text (monitor name (required), monitor serial number or unstructured text)
- 6 Additional standard timing information blocks
- Colour point data
Currently defined descriptor types are:
- 0xFF: Monitor serial number (text)
- 0xFE: Unspecified text (text)
- 0xFD: Monitor range limits. 6- or 13-byte binary descriptor.
- 0xFC: Monitor name (text)
- 0xFB: Additional white point data. 2× 5-byte descriptors, padded with 0A 20 20.
- 0xFA: Additional standard timing identifiers. 6× 2-byte descriptors, padded with 0A.
In your EDID you have 0xFF (serial number) in descriptor 1 (bytes 54-71):
00 ff 00 48 48 39 32 31 30 30 30 30 39 0a 20 20 00 00
and you have 0xFC (monitor name) in descriptor 3 (bytes 90–107) and 4 (bytes 108–125):
00 fc 00 56 69 65 77 53 6f 6e 69 63 20 45 37 37 00 00
00 fc 00 31 2d 32 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 84
so it's only a matter of extracting the information from there, e.g. descriptor 3:
56 69 65 77 53 6f 6e 69 63 20 45 37 37 >> Viewsonic E77
There are some linux tools out there that parse EDIDs... I use monitor-edid.
Here is the output in Perl dumper format on my machine:
(
+{
'EISA_ID' => 'CMO1574',
'checksum' => 25,
'detailed_timings' => [
{
'ModeLine' => '"1600x900" 97.75 1600 1648 1680 1760 900 903 908 926 -hsync -vsync',
'ModeLine_comment' => '# Monitor preferred modeline (60.0 Hz vsync, 55.5 kHz hsync, ratio 16/9, 118 dpi)',
'digital_composite' => 3,
'horizontal_active' => 1600,
'horizontal_blanking' => 160,
'horizontal_border' => 0,
'horizontal_dpi' => '118.139534883721',
'horizontal_image_size' => 344,
'horizontal_sync_offset' => 48,
'horizontal_sync_positive' => 0,
'horizontal_sync_pulse_width' => 32,
'interlaced' => 0,
'pixel_clock' => '97.75',
'preferred' => 1,
'stereo' => 0,
'vertical_active' => 900,
'vertical_blanking' => 26,
'vertical_border' => 0,
'vertical_dpi' => '118.445595854922',
'vertical_image_size' => 193,
'vertical_sync_offset' => 3,
'vertical_sync_positive' => 0,
'vertical_sync_pulse_width' => 5
}
],
'diagonal_size' => '15.5292379824145',
'edid_revision' => 3,
'edid_version' => 1,
'established_timings' => [],
'extension_flag' => 0,
'feature_support' => {
'DPMS_active_off' => 0,
'DPMS_standby' => 0,
'DPMS_suspend' => 0,
'GTF_compliance' => 0,
'has_preferred_timing' => 1,
'rgb' => 0,
'sRGB_compliance' => 0
},
'file' => '/sys/class/drm/card0-LVDS-1/edid',
'gamma' => 120,
'manufacturer_name' => 'CMO',
'max_size_horizontal' => '34.4',
'max_size_precision' => 'mm',
'max_size_vertical' => '19.3',
'monitor_details' => '',
'monitor_text' => [
'N156O6-L01',
'CMO',
'N156O6-L01'
],
'product_code' => 5492,
'ratio' => '1.78238341968912',
'ratio_name' => '16/9',
'ratio_precision' => 'mm',
'serial_number' => 0,
'standard_timings' => [],
'video_input_definition' => {
'composite_sync' => 0,
'digital' => 1,
'separate_sync' => 0,
'sync_on_green' => 0,
'voltage_level' => 0
},
'week' => 41,
'year' => 2008
}
,
)
Finally, I have no idea how to determine (in linux) if a monitor is LCD or CRT. I don't know of any library that implements such function (like this one from MS).
The following tool can be helpful for decoding edid info: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/edid-decode
Something like this should work better (all others answers didn't work 100% here):
for file in `ls -1 /sys/class/drm/*/edid`; do text=$(tr -d '\0' <"$file"); if [ -n "$text" ]; then edid-decode "$file" | grep -e Manufacturer: -e Product; sleep 0.0001; fi done
I tested here with 2 monitors. My primary is a builtin laptop monitor and the secondary is a DELL 25". This was the output:
Manufacturer: DELL Model 53359 Serial Number 809781068
Display Product Serial Number: YKFWP5790DGL
Display Product Name: DELL U2515H
Manufacturer: LGD Model 1133 Serial Number 0
You must have installed the edid-decode in your distro. My setup is DELL Latitude e5450 with Ubuntu 20.04.