Intel Has A New Driver For Linux 5.12: Reporting Your Laptop's Hinge/Keyboard Angle

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 24 January 2021 at 06:40 AM EST. 22 Comments
INTEL
Intel's latest open-source Linux driver contribution is a hinge driver that is set to debut with Linux 5.12.

The "hid-sensor-custom-intel-hinge" driver is for supporting a hinge sensor found in many modern Intel laptops. This sensor is able to calculate the angle of the laptop's hinge, the screen angle, and the keyboard angle relative to the horizon/ground. I hadn't realized this sensor was all that common these days but apparently so and enough interest to Intel that they have now provided a Linux driver for exposing this hinge / keyboard / screen angle data.


This Intel hinge driver is being volleyed into the Linux kernel under the IIO positioning code. The hinge/screen/keyboard angles are then exposed to user-space should any applications which to adapt their user-interface depending upon these different laptop angles.

The Intel hinge sensor driver code amounts to about 400 lines of code and is currently queued in the staging/IIO tree ahead of the upcoming Linux 5.12 merge window.
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