DeviceEmulator and virtual battery

  • Article

I'm looking at implementing a virtual battery in the next DeviceEmulator release.  How much control do you need over the virtual battery?

The straightforward way to emulate a battery is to have two controls:

  1. Is the emulated device on battery or A/C power?
  2. What is the battery charge as a percentage?

With those, you can simulate the transition from battery to A/C and back, and set the battery charge to values that trigger the low-battery and critical-battery events.  Is there a need for more?  The battery APIs return a SYSTEM_POWER_STATUS_EX2 structure which contains data about battery temperature, which kind of battery (NiCAD, Lithium-ion, etc.), number of seconds of runtime predicted.  They also can return status about both a primary and backup battery. 

Is that important to anyone?