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A lot of different devices provide the system with level information of some sort. For instance printers provide the level of ink or toner in cartridges, wireless mice and keyboards will provide battery level, a bluetooth, cell phone, or wifi device will provide signal level, a microphone will provide sound level, etc. For most of these there is no good way to keep track of the levels in KDE, or even in Linux in general. I think it would be good if solid provided some sort of general level meter information from such sources, with support for plugins for new devices. Each level meter would say what sort of level it reporting (ink level, battery level), the device type (printer, mouse), and the device name (epson photosmart 2718, logitech mx3145). I guess this would probably all be made available over dbus, and there would also probably be a plasma service wrapper for plasma widgets. Then whatever software or plasma widgets wanted to could listen for the levels of specific device types, provide the level information when desired, and do actions (like warnings) when the levels get above and/or below certain thresholds.

So for instance the KDE4 printer applet could listen for ink level in your printers, as could any future KDE printer configuration system and any custom 3rd-part widgets. It would be able to tell you if the ink is running out. Similarly the KDE mouse configuration module could monitor the battery level of wireless mice, the keyboard module could monitor the battery level of wireless keyboard, the kde joystick configuration module could report the battery levels of wireless joysticks and gamepads, powerdevil could combine all the various battery information, and the battery widget and/or one or more dedicated widgets could report the battery level of wireless devices as well as warnings when battery levels get too low.

Great Idea...