[PC App] webOS Charge Monitor

[GMMan]

Here's a simple app I made in a day for the purpose of displaying charging status of attached webOS devices. It has been tested on the webOS 2.x emulator, and on my 3.0.5 TouchPad. That means it will work for Pre2, Veer, Pre3, and TouchPad. I have not tested it on any 1.x devices (I don't have any), but as long as those devices have the same service calls, the app should work with them.



This release is for PC only, because it relies on the .NET Framework. If you can get it working on Mono, good for you. You will also need a working copy of Novacom installed. Readme is included. Make sure you read it.

An interesting feature of this app is it can monitor battery status remotely. That is, if your system's Novacom service can detect your device, you can use this app with it, even if it is not connected directly via USB. Look at this thread for info on Novacom over network: https://developer.palm.com/distribut...?f=119&t=19787. If you decide to try this and bind Novacom to a different address/port, in the "Select Device..." dialog box is a "Controller..." button, where you can specify the address and port of the Novacom service.

Updated: fixed inconsistent status querying

[gizmo21]

nice one. if i would charge via usb, but sadly i'm too anxious using the usb port cause my pre- display failed after usbport crack.

[GMMan]

I configured NovacomD according to the thread linked above, and here is a screenshot of the charge monitor getting charging status remotely.



I'll see if I can get a screenshot of charging via wall power some time.

[RumoredNow]

Outstanding.

That's a very outside the box idea. Love it, downloading it, plan to use it soon.

[Rnp]

Wow! Close to perfect!

Better than this, only calibrating the devices!


Best Regards...

[tony20]

Does this work when the device is fully discharged? I'm wondering if it can help all of the people with dead touchpads that won't charge. Maybe this can give us some insight into what is going on.

[GMMan]

Originally Posted by tony20

Does this work when the device is fully discharged? I'm wondering if it can help all of the people with dead touchpads that won't charge. Maybe this can give us some insight into what is going on.

Sorry, no. I could implement polling charging info from the bootloader, but I'm not sure how stable my Novacom library is and I don't want to risk messing up anyone's device on a low level.

[creepingmee]

Not to be overly critical, but wouldn't it have been better if you'd use enyojs instead of .net? That way it would be useable on stuff other than windows, and would kinda follow along with the whole webos thing a little more closely.
I would love to see more open standard coding in the future.

[GMMan]

Originally Posted by creepingmee

Not to be overly critical, but wouldn't it have been better if you'd use enyojs instead of .net? That way it would be useable on stuff other than windows, and would kinda follow along with the whole webos thing a little more closely.
I would love to see more open standard coding in the future.

In the usual case it should be done in Java. However, while Java and C# are similar in syntax, they are not completely the same and their libraries are different. I only know C#, and it'll take some effort for me to learn about Java libraries, so that's why you get .NET for now. Plus I don't know about how I'll distribute the Novacom library for Java, since Palm only has it with Novacom packages and you'd have to do some configuration to include it.

AFAIK Enyo doesn't do binary streams. The app uses a local socket connection to the Novacom server (the same way as regular Novacom does it), and there's some binary bit mangling and stuff like that necessary for the communications to work. Also, doing it in JavaScript would just be slow.

[kataran]

thank you.....it works great.....