LGS Tray Battery

A rewrite/combination of my two programs LGSTrayBattery and LGSTrayBattery_GHUB, which should allow for interaction via both the native HID and Logitech Gaming Hub websockets.

New Features to V1

• Retargetted from .Net Framework 4.6 to .Net 6
  • Dropped 32Bit Windows
• New reactive Icons
  • Now reacts to light/dark theme
  • Now reacts to what type of device you currently have selected (Supports mouse, keyboards and headsets)
• Native HID Battery percentages now uses a look up table rather than old xml files
  • Assuming they use 3.7V lipo batteries, if you are getting weird battery percentages or voltage readings < 3.5V, please open an issue
• Updated HID backend to detect plugging in wireless devices
• Smarter polling
  • When successful don't update for a long delay, else check back frequently till an update
• "Persistant" Data
  • Device battery percentages should persists even if said device is disconnected, battery percentages will then be updated on reconnection

Known Missing features

• Force update battery percentage (Smarter polling with force device rescan should cover this)

Features

Tray Indicator

Battery percentage and voltage (if supported) in a tray tooltip with notification icon.

Double click for rescan/refresh.

Right-click for more options.

Reactive Icons

Icon changes to match devices type (Current supported: mouse, keyboard and headsets)

Icon changes to match light/dark system theme

Http/Web "server" api

By default the running of the http server is disabled, to enable modify appsettings.ini and change serverEnable = false to serverEnable = true. The IP address and port used for bindings are under tcpAddr and tcpPort respectively with the defaults being localhost and 12321.

tcpAddr accepts either a hostname (DESKTOP-1234) or an IP address (127.0.0.1) to bind to, if you are not sure use localhost or if you have admin permission 0.0.0.0 to allow for external access to the devices. If an invalid hostname is provided, the server will fall back to binding on 127.0.0.1.

Send a HTTP/GET request to {tcpAddr}:{tcpPort}/devices, for the list of devices currently detected by the program and the corresponding deviceID.

With the deviceID, a HTTP/GET request to {tcpAddr}:{tcpPort}/device/{deviceID}, will result in an xml document of the name and battery status of the device. Devices that do not support battery_voltage will report 0.00.

Device ids starting with dev originates from tapping into Logitech GHUB's own drivers, while random numbers are from the natively implement HID++ code. Thus, there are some fields that different between the two,

* - Depends on the device

** - Device ID will change, (potentially useless) as some devices switches to a wired mode creating a new device ID (Tested with G403)

HID++ Device Sources

As of v2.0.8, there are now 3 sources in which the program will pull battery status,

• Logitech G HUB via Websockets
• Native HID, C#/HID.NET (Might be broken in Windows 11?, default disabled)
• Native HID, C++/hidapi via PInvoke (Called "Native" in settings)

These sources can be individually disabled/enabled before runtime via appsettings.ini, in the DeviceManager section,

[DeviceManager]
GHUB = true
HID_NET = false
Native = true

GHUB is Logitech G HUB, HID_NET is C# with HID.NET, Native is C++/hidapi

Differences between HID.NET and hidapi

The hidapi backend is rewritten in C++, and it differs from HID.NET in the following ways,

• Hot plugging is not supported, currently requires a manual selection of rescan devices to trigger a scan of newly connected devices
• Ability to see more than 1 devices per unifying reciever
  • Tested with a KB+M on a unifying dongle
• Ability to parse Unifying Receiver Battery Reporting (1004) (Coded in, have not been tested)
• Detect if device is charging (No notification tray UI changes, and as mention aboved may be useless as some devices in charging move switches device ID, the webserver xml output should show it)

Known Issues

Common

• Light/Dark theme reaction is not fast, need to wait until a battery update or selected device swap

• Native HID and GHUB do not provide similar percentages, this is due to how native and GHUB calculates percentages from the device's voltages. Native uses an average curve of a 3.7V lipo battery, while GHUB will use a lookup table specific to the device.

Native HID (HID.NET)

• If the device is sleeping or disconnected, the program will not detect it even if the reciever is plugged in, usually occuring at boot

  • Current fix, restart the program or force a rescan via a double click or context menu

• Does not support mice that uses HID++ 1.0 protocols. (Older than 2012?)

• Does not work on mice that uses "Unified Battery Reporting". (Newer than late 2020?)

• For unifying receiver devices, currently the program only polls the first device.

Native HID (C++/hidapi)

• Hotplug not supported
• Device and protocol discovery changed from the HID.NET method, some devices like the G533 headsets might not be detected.

GHUB

• Future GHUB version may change IPC protocol/endpoints (current websocket)

Working with

• G403 Wireless
• MX Anywhere 2
• Wireless Keyboard Dell KB714

Community Tested

• G304 Lightspeed Wireless
• G502 Lightspeed Wireless
• G604 Lightspeed Wireless
• G703 Lightspeed Wireless
• G933 Gaming Wireless Headset
• MX Vertical
• ERGO K860 for Business

How to Build project

Run prepare_project.bat to generate the C++ Visual studio project that can be linked with the C# project.

Open the LGSTrayNative_cpp_src folder in Visual studio to modify the low level C++ libraries directly.

Acknowledgements

This project began as a task with me messing around with my mouse for battery tracking.

• Solaar, for the source code to base the HID++ paramters and reverse engineering of the protocol.
• XB1ControllerBatteryIndicator, for the idea and base of the icons
• The Noun Project, for base icons
  • Mouse, By projecthayat, ID, In the Technology & computer hardware Collection
  • Keyboard, By HideMaru, ID, In the Electronic BL.2 Collection
  • Headphones, By Peter Lakenbrink, DE, In the School and Online Learning Glyph Collection