More Bluetooth (and gaming) features

In the midst of post-release bug fixing, we've also added a fair number of new features to our stack. As usual, new features span a number of different components, so integrators will have to be careful picking up all the components when, well, integrating.

PS3 clones joypads support

Do you have a PlayStation 3 joypad that feels just a little bit "off"? You can't find the Sony logo anywhere on it? The figures on the face buttons look like barbed wire? And if it were a YouTube video, it would say "No copyright intended"?

Bingo. When plugged in via USB, those devices advertise themselves as SHANWAN or Gasia, and implement the bare minimum to work when plugged into a PlayStation 3 console. But as a Linux computer would behave slightly differently, we need to fix a couple of things.

The first fix was simple, but necessary to be able to do any work: disable the rumble motor that starts as soon as you plug the pad through USB.

Once that's done, we could work around the fact that the device isn't Bluetooth compliant, and hard-code the HID service it's supposed to offer.

Bluetooth LE Battery reporting

Bluetooth Low Energy is the new-fangled (7-year old) protocol for low throughput devices, from a single coin-cell powered sensor, to input devices. What's great is that there's finally a standardised way for devices to export their battery statuses. I've added support for this in BlueZ, which UPower then picks up for desktop integration goodness.

There are a number of Bluetooth LE joypads available for pickup, including a few that should be firmware upgradeable. Look for "Bluetooth 4" as well as "Bluetooth LE" when doing your holiday shopping.

gnome-bluetooth work

Finally, this is the boring part. Benjamin and I reworked code that's internal to gnome-bluetooth, as used in the Settings panel as well as the Shell, to make it use modern facilities like GDBusObjectManager. The overall effect of this is, less code, less brittle and more reactive when Bluetooth adapters come and go, such as when using airplane mode.

Apart from the kernel patch mentioned above (you'll know if you need it :), those features have been integrated in UPower 0.99.7 and in the upcoming BlueZ 5.48. And they will of course be available in Fedora, both in rawhide and as updates to Fedora 27 as soon as the releases have been done and built.

GG!

Blog backlog, Post 3, DisplayLink-based USB3 graphics support for Fedora

Last year, after DisplayLink released the first version of the supporting tools for their USB3 chipsets, I tried it out on my Dell S2340T.

As I wanted a clean way to test new versions, I took Eric Nothen's RPMs, and updated them along with newer versions, automating the creation of 32- and 64-bit x86 versions.

The RPM contains 3 parts, evdi, a GPLv2 kernel module that creates a virtual display, the LGPL library to access it, and a proprietary service which comes with "firmware" files.

Eric's initial RPMs used the precompiled libevdi.so, and proprietary bits, compiling only the kernel module with dkms when needed. I changed this, compiling the library from the upstream repository, using the minimal amount of pre-compiled binaries.

This package supports quite a few OEM devices, but does not work correctly with Wayland, so you'll need to disable Wayland support in /etc/gdm/custom.conf if you want it to work at the login screen, and without having to restart the displaylink.service systemd service after logging in.

 Plugged in via DisplayPort and USB (but I can only see one at a time)

The source for the RPM are on GitHub. Simply clone and run make in the repository to create 32-bit and 64-bit RPMs. The proprietary parts are redistributable, so if somebody wants to host and maintain those RPMs, I'd be glad to pass this on.