Re: [External] Using IIO to export laptop palm-sensor and lap-mode info to userspace?

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi,

Enrico, thank you for your input.

See Mark's excellent email for answers to most of your questions,
I just have one little thing to add.

On 10/12/20 2:36 PM, Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult wrote:
> On 08.10.20 09:10, Hans de Goede wrote:

<snip>

> Back to the technical side: IMHO we should first work out what the
> actual purpose of these sensors could be - are they useful for
> anything else than just these specific cases ? If not, I'm not
> sure whether it makes sense to put them into IIO at all, but using
> a specific board driver instead.

Right, also note that although there are doubtlessly sensors involved
we don't actually get any meaningful / direct access to these sensors.

We only get to talk to firmware which basically gives us:

Laptop is on someone's lap: yes/no
Someone is resting on the palmrest: yes/no

The lack of direct sensor access also makes this a less then
ideal case for using iio. So I believe that the suggestion
to extend the existing evdev/input SW_FRONT_PROXIMITY support
with 2 new SW_LAP_PROXIMITY and SW_PALMREST_PROXIMITY suggestion
makes a ton of sense. Switches are binary and given that this
really is a derived value and not raw sensor access using the
input system seems a better match.

Regards,

Hans