iio-sensor-proxy

IIO sensors to D-Bus proxy

See https://developer.gnome.org/iio-sensor-proxy/1.0/ for developer information.

Installation

./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
make
make install

It requires libgudev and systemd (>= 233 for the accelerometer quirks).

Usage

With a GNOME 3.18 (or newer) based system, orientation changes will automatically be applied when rotating the panel, ambient light will be used to change the screen brightness, and Geoclue will be able to read the compass data to show the direction in Maps.

Note that a number of kernel bugs will prevent it from working correctly on some machines so please make sure to use the latest upstream kernel (kernel crashes on the Surface Pro, sensor failing to work after suspend on the Yoga Pro, etc.).

You can verify that sensors are detected by running udevadm info --export-db and checking for an output resembling this one:

P: /devices/platform/80860F41:04/i2c-12/i2c-BMA250E:00/iio:device0
N: iio:device0
E: DEVNAME=/dev/iio:device0
E: DEVPATH=/devices/platform/80860F41:04/i2c-12/i2c-BMA250E:00/iio:device0
E: DEVTYPE=iio_device
E: MAJOR=249
E: MINOR=0
E: SUBSYSTEM=iio
E: SYSTEMD_WANTS=iio-sensor-proxy.service
E: TAGS=:systemd:
E: USEC_INITIALIZED=7750292

You can now check whether a sensor is detected by running:

gdbus introspect --system --dest net.hadess.SensorProxy --object-path /net/hadess/SensorProxy

After that, use monitor-sensor to see changes in the ambient light sensor or the accelerometer. Note that compass changes are only available to GeoClue but if you need to ensure that GeoClue is getting correct data you can run: su -s /bin/sh geoclue -c monitor-sensor

If that doesn't work, please file an issue, make sure any running iio-sensor-proxy has been stopped: systemctl stop iio-sensor-proxy.service and attach the output of: G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all /usr/sbin/iio-sensor-proxy running as root.

Accelerometer orientation

When the accelerometer is not mounted the same way as the screen, we need to modify the readings from the accelerometer to make sure that the computed orientation matches the screen one.

iio-sensor-proxy reads this information from the device's ACCEL_MOUNT_MATRIX udev property. See 60-sensor.hwdb for details.

Compass testing

Only the Geoclue daemon (as the geoclue user) is allowed to access the net.hadess.SensorProxy.Compass interface, the results of which it will propagate to clients along with positional information.

If your device does not contain a compass, you can run tests with:

• If your device does not contain a real compass:
  • Add FAKE_COMPASS=1 to the environment of iio-sensor-proxy.service if your device does not contain a real one
  • Run the daemon manually with systemctl start iio-sensor-proxy.service
• Verify that iio-sensor-proxy is running with systemctl or ps
• As root, get a shell as the geoclue user with su -s /bin/bash geoclue
• Run, as the geoclue user, monitor-sensor

Known problems

Every Linux kernel from 4.3 up to version 4.12 had a bug that made made iio-sensor-proxy fail to see any events coming from sensors until the sensor was power-cycled (unplugged and replugged, or suspended and resumed).

The bug was finally fixed in this commit in the upstream kernel and backported to stable releases. If you experience unresponsive sensors, ask your distributor to make sure this patch was applied to the version you're using.

References

• sensorfw
• android-iio-sensors-hal
• Sensor orientation on MSDN

Tested on

• Apple MacBook Air (4,2)
• Apple MacBook Air (6,2)
• Apple MacBook Pro (8.2)
• Asus Transformer Book TP500LB
• Asus Zenbook UX31A, UX303L, UX305, UX330UA
• Cube i9
• Dell Inspiron 13 7000
• Dell Venue 11 Pro (7140)
• Dell Venue 8 Pro
• Dell XPS 9365
• HP Pavilion X360
• HP Spectre x360 (Kaby Lake)
• Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13
• Lenovo ThinkPad Twist
• Lenovo X1 Carbon 2014 (rev2)
• Lenovo X1 Tablet
• Lenovo Yoga 2 13" and 11"
• Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
• Lenovo Yoga 460
• Lenovo Yoga 900
• Microsoft Surface Pro 2
• Onda v975w
• Toshiba Portégé Z10t
• Toshiba Radius 11 L10WC10C