Re: Best option for handling dependencies between sysfs params.

[Jonathan Cameron]

Hi Jean
> On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:24:09 +0100, Jonathan Cameron wrote:
>> The tsl2561 ambient light sensor has separate controls for integration
>> time and for gain.
>>
>> Now, discussions about the tsl2550 driver suggested that range be handled
>> by an illuminance0_max_range parameter.  In that particular device things
>> are simple as there is one internal variable effecting the range.
>>
>> So to try and match interfaces, I'm intending to have the
>> same illuminance0_max_range and also an integration time parameter.
>> (avoiding for now the more complex manual option!)
>>
>> My current approach is to use writes to illuminance0_max_range to store
>> a 'requested' max gain value.  Thus a later change to the integration time
>> parameter may well result in the internal gain parameter also changing
>> in order to meet this desired value.
>>
>> Reading this parameter will always return the max range value for
>> the current configuration.
>>
>> Do people think this is a valid approach?  More or less corresponds to 
>> 'integration time priority' in the language of photography. In effect
>> it makes the internal gain an automatic parameter rather than integration
>> time. Could just as easily do the other way round though.
>>
>> All comments welcome.
> 
> This sounds like a valid approach indeed. I agree that it makes more
> sense to let users chose the integration time, as it determines how
> averaged the values are, than the gain which doesn't serve much purpose
> by itself. Even though the TSL2550 changes the integration time, not
> the gain, to select the range. But I can imagine other light sensor
> chips could change the gain and not the integration range, so it's not
> really relevant.
> 
> That being said, I am curious if you consider the integration time a
> valuable tweaking knob for the user, as it would be to a photographer,
> or not. If not, I imagine that we could set both the gain and the
> integration time based on illuminance0_max_range. Just arbitrarily
> decide which is set first and how, and which is computed then to match
> the request. That would be a more simple user-interface.
> 
> I'm not saying that making the user-interface simple is the ultimate
> goal here. I am raising the point because I simply don't know. If there
> is no immediate need for integration time tweaking, then I see a value
> to make all chips use the same simple interface.
I'll fully admit I'm only writing this driver because it's on a sensor
board for one of the platforms I maintain and I'd like to fully support that
board.  I guess if anyone cares we can add it later.
> 
> Looking at the TSL2561 datasheet, I see that the integration time has
> only 3 possible values (13.7 ms, 101 ms and 402 ms), and the gain only
> 2 (x1 and x16), for a total of 6 possible ranges. This is more than the
> 2 possibilities offered by the TSL2550, but still doesn't strike me as
> fine-tuning capable. Arbitrarily considering integration time of 402 ms
> and gain of x1 as the "standard" range, here go the possibilities:
> 
> 13.7 ms,  x1: 0 -  0.034
> 101  ms,  x1: 0 -  0.252
> 13.7 ms, x16: 0 -  0.544
> 402  ms,  x1: 0 -  1.000
> 101  ms, x16: 0 -  4.032
> 402  ms, x16: 0 - 16.000
> 
> There's not much overlapping, which gives me the impression that
> setting both the integration time and the gain based on the requested
> range is a valid option, at least for the TSL2561. What do you think?
Yup that sounds sensible to me.  I hadn't actually worked out the ranges
available.  That's what one gets for blindly coding without taking a step
back and thinking about it! 
> 
> (I'm curious if I missed something though, as the datasheet claims
> 1,000,000-to-1 dynamic range, when the above suggests 470-to-1.)

To be cynical they are probably multiplying that by the range the adc's
will output. 
 

Thanks,

Jonathan
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