[Feature Request] Remote/Controller Status/Battery Level

[gregflynn]

I'm currently setting up flex-launcher and one thing i was going to setup conky with transparent background for was controller statuses.

Why?

• Feedback that a remote or a controller has been connected and recognized
• In the case of wireless controllers/remotes that report it, we can show battery level

The "how" could be interesting. If you think this is a universally useful feature to bake in, it could be a first class widget like the clock. Or you could go the i3-wm style route and make a line that can be populated with stdout of a command run on a configurable cadence to populate a custom widget. Happy to riff on other alternatives too

This all came to mind after I decided the transparent background + conky route wasn't worth the caveats.

[complexlogic]

SDL has an API for game controller battery, so that would be feasible. Not sure how remote battery/status could be implemented. As far as I'm aware there is no common standard for wireless remotes.

[gregflynn]

I don't think there's any standard unfortunately no. Maybe it's a safe assumption that anything connected bluetooth to an HTPC is worth noting on the UI? For my use case all my devices are either bluetooth Dualshock 4 controllers, bluetooth 8bitdo controllers or wired. I used to use batocera.linux for this machine and their fork of EmulationStation has little controller icons that pop up when wired or wireless controllers are present and if it's wireless it has a battery percentage. That where this idea came from.

Maybe this is better conceptualized as a bluetooth connected devices widget where ya show an icon per connected device and battery level if present and show some icon based on what the device tells you. I'm assuming that's possible based on what I've seen from bluetooth managers like Blueberry or Blueman but I haven't played with bluetooth devices that intimately