Remote Desktop battery monitor | The Coffeehouse

LeoDavidson

I often use Remote Desktop to access my main desktop PC from my laptop.

RDP works great but one thing that bugs me is that when it's full-screen I can no longer see the laptop's battery meter in the taskbar status area.

I'm thinking about writing a little tool to put a copy of the meter for the laptop (RDP client) into the taskbar of the desktop (RDP server) while connected to it.

Anyone know if such a thing already exists, or have any suggestions on the best way to transmit the battery info and/or make it run on the desktop only while the laptop is RDP'd into it? Seems like something that could be done in a number of ways with various trade-offs.

Anyone else interested in such a thing or is it just me? Smiley If I write one it'll be free.

dahat

I rather like the sound of this.

I'd suggest looking into Terminal Services Virtual Channels for sending the data back and forth.

LeoDavidson

In reply to dahat

#Jun 26th @ 11:20 AM

Ah, thank you. That's just the kind of suggestion I was hoping for. I thought there was a way to send data over RDP but went looking in the wrong place.

ZippyV
Fired Up

You're making it too difficult. Just create an application that displays the battery status and set the window to be "on top".

LeoDavidson

In reply to ZippyV

#Jun 26th @ 11:55 AM

That's no fun and it'll end up on top of something I don't want it to be on top of. Smiley

ZippyV
Fired Up

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Jun 26th @ 3:52 PM

Make it 50% transparent.

dahat

In reply to ZippyV

#Jun 26th @ 4:28 PM

That assumes you don't mind ghosted windows/objects laying about.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Jun 26th @ 3:52 PM

Get the battery meter window so it avoids the mouse. If your cursor approaches within 100px of it then it moves to another appropriate location.

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to W3bbo

#Jun 26th @ 4:52 PM

sounds like a bad idea, you'll end up with a jumping window that's never in the right place, it would be better if you move it to a "appropiate location" then move it back where it was when the mouse get's out of the 100px+ window area location

AndyC

In reply to Ion Todirel

#Jun 26th @ 9:35 PM

Or do the opposite of the Office 2007 floaty toolbar and fade it out when the mouse gets close to it.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to AndyC

#Jun 26th @ 11:04 PM

I like how Google Chrome handles this situation (link targets are shown as an overlay over the page rather than in a status bar)-- as the mouse begins to cover the text, the overlay moves down to reveal the content that's underneath it. I'd imagine something similar (an always-on-top window that moves off screen when you mouse near it) would be a pretty good solution here.

Of course, I'd personally prefer to go the route of running an app on the terminal server box that connects to another app on the client... that would be a whole lot more fun. Wink

LeoDavidson

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 12:01 AM

Yeah, having code at both ends seems more fun and likely to produce a better result.

In particular, the indicator would automatically be in the right place no matter where the taskbar is and it wouldn't stay on the screen when remote apps go full-screen.

If I get around to writing it this century, that is. Smiley

Refrax

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Jun 27th @ 3:55 AM

found this for C#
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/TSAddinInCS.aspx
as where i work has a large Citrix farm this could be something that i can use as well.

dahat

In reply to Refrax

#Jun 27th @ 12:19 PM

Be warned that that example doesn't seem to work well in/on a 64bit client it seems... I suspect it's due to the strange way he is doing his disassembly/reassembly to export the C# functions.