USBOTG and Charge Simultaneously on Stream 8

[HighSpeed]

My apologies for abandoning this thread for practically a year.  I have been keeping tabs at least.

It looks like within around 5-6 months of the original post (OP) some readers found and posted about products which do charge + data.

I haven't tested them myself yet.  This has gone on the back burner for me but I will likely need them eventually.

So it looks likely that it is possible now with off the shelf hardware.  Nice.

To answer your question about windows being aware of charging status.

"Yes it is."

The system tray in Windows 8 shows a battery icon with "chaser" style animation showing the battery level increasing.

You can also primary click on this icon and a little popup will say "Plugged in, Charging" or "plugged in, not charging"

So  it can also independentaly tell if a connector is plugged in vs. charging.  I know this because my original charge cable failed.  You can also test by plugging in the cable without plugging in the other end to the power block, or by turning up the screen brightness to the max.  (It will not indicate charging in this state because it is using as much or more power than the charger can supply)

The only curiosity this leaves me with is "Can windows provide only this binary charging/not-charging or can it provide a charging rate."

With additional info such as this, an app could calculate and predict how long it will take to fully charge the battery from its current level given the sensed charge rate.

But this would require two things:  

1. The stream 8 containing hardware in  that can sense the battery charging current with at least a few bits of resolution  (not just one bit as suggested by the windows tray icon etc).

2. Windows 8 providing access to the info provided by that sensor.

Thanks for everyone's input.  Not sure if I mentioned it before but with this hardware you could potentially use the stream as a minimalist workstation with a keyboard, mouse, HDD, monitor, or whatever you dream up. . . .

[CarPC]

FYI: Yes, Windows API interface allows the detection of :  A battery exists, it's charge capacity, hours remaining and charging status - IE - Charged (100%), charging, holding and of course not charging.

I've programmed this into my Car PC Front end Software. Works in Win 8.1 and Win10, works the same on the HP stream 8, Surface Pro and a Chinese low cost unit.