Hi, On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:28:56 -0700, Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> When we tried to push N900's accelerometer driver as an >> input device you commented you didn't want sensors such >> as accelerometers, magnetometers, proximity, etc on the >> input layer because "they are not user input", although >> I didn't fully agree with you, we had to modify the drivers >> and, I believe, one of them is sitting in staging under >> the industrial i/o subsystem. >> >> Are you now accepting sensor drivers on the input layer ? >> that will make our life a lot easier but we need some >> definition to avoid having to re-work drivers when we >> want to push them to mainline. >> > > I got persuaded that 3-axis accelerometers are most often indended to be > used as input devices so I decided I should take these in (adxl134x is > there). I still think that sensor devices in general are better suited > to IIO subsystem and I hope it will get out of staging soon. > > Once it is out of staging we may think about creating a IIO-to-input > bridge (copuld be either in kernel or a userspace solution based on > uinput) to route sensors that are indeed used as HIDs. > > Hope this makes sense. It kinda does, but such sensors will be more and more used as input devices, specially for gaming on mobile devices. For example a proximity sensor might be used as the trigger button on a first person shooting game; accelerometers will be used to walk through the map and a magnetometer might be used to look behind you and a gyroscope to turn around your own axis. In the end, the user is the one moving the device around and generating such events, so why not avoiding yet another subsystem if we will have to resort to solutions such as iio-to-input bridge, which smells like a hackish solution to get input events from sensors anyway. I really hope I could convince you that, on mobile at least, sensors will be mostly used as HID devices and will give app developers new ways for them to allow users to interact with their app. Take a look at how a gyroscope is used on iphone, for instance [1]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORcu-c-qnjg -- balbi -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-input" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
