feat: peripheral battery module for battery powered peripherals #139

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opened 2026-07-12 00:44:10 +02:00 by AramJonghu · 5 comments
Collaborator

What's missing / annoying

WiFi and Bluetooth modules are in the work. A similar dropdown could be made for peripherals to show battery. KDE Plasma does this as well where the information is in the brightness tray entry. This avoids needing software like solaar or openrazer frontends running in the background to use their applets.

How should it work

It can use the current battery/power/power_profile dropdown entry and show all connected wireless peripherals.

Other approaches considered

No response

Area

UI / Components

Mockups / references / notes

Sadly no image or reference I found of KDE Plasma 6.x. I saw the feature when installing Linux with KDE Plasma on an old laptop. If you wish for a reference, I could look to grab a screenshot.

### What's missing / annoying WiFi and Bluetooth modules are in the work. A similar dropdown could be made for peripherals to show battery. KDE Plasma does this as well where the information is in the brightness tray entry. This avoids needing software like solaar or openrazer frontends running in the background to use their applets. ### How should it work It can use the current battery/power/power_profile dropdown entry and show all connected wireless peripherals. ### Other approaches considered _No response_ ### Area UI / Components ### Mockups / references / notes Sadly no image or reference I found of KDE Plasma 6.x. I saw the feature when installing Linux with KDE Plasma on an old laptop. If you wish for a reference, I could look to grab a screenshot.
AramJonghu added the enhancement label 2026-07-12 00:44:10 +02:00
zach was assigned by AramJonghu 2026-07-12 00:44:10 +02:00
AramJonghu added this to the Zshell board project 2026-07-12 00:44:10 +02:00
Owner

I did previously look into replacing solaar with something like this, but logitech does not use the "classic" way to allow stats parsing on Linux (i.e. reading from proc or sys.) Meaning we would need to implement a backend that uses logitech's own "api", if it can even be called an api, likely reading the source code for solaar and implementing something similar.

I'm open to ideas about this, maybe I overlooked something when I was reading about logitech and maybe it's easier to do for other peripherals, but it seems to me like we'd either have to reverse-engineer peripheral's undocumented connection api, or they allow us to read from a file. At least for deeper info than just displaying that said device is connected.

I did previously look into replacing solaar with something like this, but logitech does not use the "classic" way to allow stats parsing on Linux (i.e. reading from `proc` or `sys`.) Meaning we would need to implement a backend that uses logitech's own "api", if it can even be called an api, likely reading the source code for solaar and implementing something similar. I'm open to ideas about this, maybe I overlooked something when I was reading about logitech and maybe it's easier to do for other peripherals, but it seems to me like we'd either have to reverse-engineer peripheral's undocumented connection api, or they allow us to read from a file. At least for deeper info than just displaying that said device is connected.
Author
Collaborator

I'd think it uses some approachable way. I can do some testing on those laptops running Plasma. I got Logitech mice and a Sennheiser ANC headphone to test for example. But crucially; if other desktops can do it without those backends, I think it can be done here as well. I wonder how they do it.

I'd think it uses some approachable way. I can do some testing on those laptops running Plasma. I got Logitech mice and a Sennheiser ANC headphone to test for example. But crucially; if other desktops can do it without those backends, I think it can be done here as well. I wonder how they do it.
Owner

I know for a fact that it is possible, and I wasn't trying to say otherwise. All I was saying is that it might be out of scope depending on what the required backend work would be.

I know for a fact that it is *possible*, and I wasn't trying to say otherwise. All I was saying is that it might be out of scope depending on what the required backend work would be.
AramJonghu moved this to To Do in Zshell board on 2026-08-13 21:42:45 +02:00
Owner

This should probably be closed.

This should probably be closed.
Author
Collaborator

Closing, done in #140 .

Closing, done in #140 .
AramJonghu moved this to Done in Zshell board on 2026-08-17 21:09:23 +02:00
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Reference: zach/z-bar-qt#139