Feature Toggle Expansion Card

I thought that an expansion card with mappable hardware toggles would be really useful. Having the option in BIOS to limit the battery SoC is great but it is annoying to have to go into the BIOS anytime I want to set the computer to 100%. It would be nice to have the ability to do it thru the OS.

If there was an expansion card with (I’m thinking, with 3 toggles on it), the toggles can be mapped to various computer functions. This would also increase the customizability of the system.

For example, someone may want a physical switch for the Bluetooth radio but not Wi-Fi. A switch can be configured so that when it is toggled, the Bluetooth radio will be turned On and Off.

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The charge limit is writeable from Userland. Search “Exploring the Embedded Controller” for more details.

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@D.H The SoC reference was an example of something that could be potentially linked to a mapped toggle switch, much like the Bluetooth example.

Thanks for the suggestion for the search. I may look into that to see if I can make a widget or something to put a toggle on my desktop.

You realize there’s (practically speaking) no such thing, right? The whole point of a hardware toggle is that it’s hard-wired to the thing it toggles. The only way you could make something like that “configurable” is maybe with some DIP switch magic, which would take up a ton of space, be a bear to design, and absolutely under no circumstances could be built into an expansion card.

@matthew3 I hope you aren’t intentionally interpreting this as a request to somehow create a card that actively changes the internal circuitry of the computer just so you can shoot it down and sound superior.

You need an expansion card with physical switches that can know their state, can remember that state over power-cycles, and software to map the switch to an internal computer function. There is already a working version of this in the community with a rotary wheel to control functions.

…all of which can be done in software.

But, okay, I guess you just want software mappable switches. In retrospect, I’m not sure where I read “hardware [privacy] switch” into your original message. Maybe just because your examples are all things for which “real” hardware switches are desired by many people.