DeviceKit-power is a system activated service I’ll be writing about in detail in a blog post in the near future. It’s a bit like HAL, but makes common API calls easy for applications (is battery power low?) and also moves the battery profiling down to the system layer from the session so it works for all users and more importantly from the GDM login screen. It’s very lightweight and low on resource usage when it’s active.
Here are some screenshots from gnome-power-manager trunk (compile with –enable-devkit-power).
The monitor device is a Watts Up Pro device. As you plug it in, DeviceKit-power opens the device, and starts reading data. I’m using it here to monitor my power strip with my laptop and all the power-warts attached. I’ll be converting gnome-power-manager to use DeviceKit-power rather than HAL during the next release cycle. Hopefully, I’ll maintain both HAL and DeviceKit-power backends, although this isn’t making the number of #ifdefs any smaller, which sucks from a readability point of view.
The GUI’s are pretty raw, so suggestions and criticisms are welcome.