hal: ups as input?

[Matthew Mastracci]

Sean Middleditch wrote:

> I have an APC UPS unit attached via USB (for monitoring and such), and
> HAL reports it as the capability 'input' - doesn't smell right to me. 
> ;-)  perhaps a 'ups' capability is needed.

Actually, from the point of view of the kernel, the APC device *is* an 
input device.  More specifically, it's a HID-class device.  This is a 
class of device that presents arrays of numbers to the kernel - it's up 
to userspace programs to handle and interpret these.

Unfortunately, USB doesn't have a UPS class of device.

BTW, I have the same UPS at home and I've played around with the data 
you can get from it.  You could pretty easily create a user-space daemon 
to connect to the kernel APC devices and interpret the HID data.  I've 
done this already in C# under Windows - it would be a small step to port 
this to Linux.

Matt.