Re: Pulse audio Jack detect

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey Bart,

On Tue, 2015-09-15 at 08:46 +0200, Bart Mariën wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We are a non profit. We use debian/gnome for a dedicated distance
> learning tool. 
> We have about 600 units installed. Have a look on our website, it's
> actually pretty cool what we do :)
>
> The learning tool is basically a customized video conferencing app.
>
> We heavily rely on Pulse audio to configure audio devices . In our
> current setup we get quite some support related to configurations of
> audio devices that use a combined mini-jack for microphone and
> headphone. Especially new laptops nowadays have one combined port
> instead of two separate.
>
> What we have found is we can configure pulse audio to automatically
> select newly connected devices, which works great. However, pulse
> audio jack-detect cannot determine if the newly connected device is a
> microphone, headphone or combined device.  So if a user for example
> wants to use external speakers and the built in microphone, the
> moment the speakers are connected, pulseaudio will reconfigure
> speaker and microphone. Which is wrong ...
>
> Canonical has built a tool which will prompt the user the to select
> which device he/she connected. Have a look here: http://voices.canoni
> cal.com/david.henningsson/2014/03/07/headset-jacks-on-newer-laptops/
>
> We have a developer that can port this to gnome . For us this would
> mean decreased support request, and improved user experience.
>
> Would the gnome project be interested in this development? Can we
> push our changes upstream? Do we need to coordinate efforts?

Have you verified that, in your case, that those machine's firmwares
and/or drivers cannot be fixed? Have you verified whether Windows can
detect the type of device you're plugging in, and if not, how this is
handled in Windows?

I'm very wary of working around broken hardware in such a user-visible,
and disturbing way. Once we've assessed whether it's actually
necessary, we can discuss where and how we can do the integration.

Cheers