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Dylan McCall
Asked: 2010-11-13 18:34:56 +0800 CST

Other devices in the battery power indicator?

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Every now and then, I encounter some mention of other devices being shown in the power indicator. For example, along with the laptop battery, listing the battery level for an iPod being charged over USB. I understand the specification mentions that, too, but I definitely haven't seen it with any of my various devices that have batteries in them.

So, does that feature truly exist right now? Any information on what hardware is supported and whether that support can expand in the future? Anything people can do to help? :)

power-management indicator ayatana gnome-power-manager

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I have 2 Logitech wireless mouse (mice ?). One of them (an old model) shows the battery level on the indicator. The other one (newer) doesn't.

    I'm really not sure what makes it work or not, or how. But I can tell you it actually exists :-)

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  2. The gnome-power-manager source has many references to wireless mouse battery levels and the like, and the NEWS file has some related entries. I only took a cursory look, and am not sure; try something like bzr branch lp:ubuntu/gnome-power-manager && grep -r -i mouse gnome-power-manager/ and see if you can figure it out.

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  3. Also, if you plug an iPhone (not sure about iPod Touch) You'll see this under there

    alt text

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  4. As far as I know there isn't any hardware support for iPod, or other devices to express battery levels. I've checked udev and couple of other things and I haven't been able to find anything that performs the backend functionality.

    I think the designers are dreaming a little of what might be possible.

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