The BIOS knowledge page mentions that there is an accelerometer inside the Framework Laptop. I know in the past, they were used in laptops to protect HDDs by disabling them when sudden movement is detected. AFAIK the only other use for it on an SSD-only laptop is for 2-in-1s to determine screen orientation.
Since the Framework Laptop has neither of these, what is the purpose of the accelerometer?
We have it off by default, but we left it in there in case folks want to run ChromeOS or Android in the future which have more use for it. We were also considering it to enable a “lap detect” feature at some point. If none of these end up being useful, we’ll probably remove it from future mainboards for cost savings.
I like it! I may make some automations to make use of it, when I get one in my hands.
For example, reduce FPS and GPU to minimums if it’s shaking (when shaking you are carrying it or doing something you really can’t look at the screen properly) and save battery that way, even if it was forgotten turned on.
Or even, if the accelerometer is good enough, detect when it is in a car and change the brightness calculations and other timers so the driver is not distracted by the co-pilot’s PC usage
So many things can be done!
This can be used for fall detection or something? I know it is not an Apple Watch but this can be a helpful piece of information for diagnostics or repair. It would be helpful to know whether the device suffered some mechanical shock. For example if it did suffer some mechanical shock the repairman would like to check if any ports joints became loose.
hear me out… VR thinclient. if the accelerometer is good enough then all you would need is a headset with 4 standard expansion ports, 2 for wide-angle cameras for inside-out tracking and two for USB-C/PD?DP into two monitors in the headset.
Just a note on this that we’re going to be removing the accelerometer from upcoming manufacturing. This is one part that there is a global shortage around, and rather than risk our ability to produce Framework Laptops on time, we decided to de-populate the part. Given that it was never enabled by default in BIOS, and I suspect nobody is actually using it, there is probably no real-life impact to this. There is potentially an interesting path to build an accelerometer+gyro+magnetometer Expansion Card to be a more capable motion sensing tool as a project.
This is a cool idea. A lap detect mode that triggers some extra cooling to keep your legs from getting spit roasted while letting the system run hotter and faster when on a desk would be a nice little QoL feature.
Though the removal of the part to ensure your boards ship in a timely manner does seem more important than a possible future feature.