Re: [PATCH v6 2/7] iio: light: Add gain-time-scale helpers

[Matti Vaittinen]

On 3/27/23 14:28, Matti Vaittinen wrote:
> Some light sensors can adjust both the HW-gain and integration time.
> There are cases where adjusting the integration time has similar impact
> to the scale of the reported values as gain setting has.
>
> IIO users do typically expect to handle scale by a single writable 'scale'
> entry. Driver should then adjust the gain/time accordingly.
>
> It however is difficult for a driver to know whether it should change
> gain or integration time to meet the requested scale. Usually it is
> preferred to have longer integration time which usually improves
> accuracy, but there may be use-cases where long measurement times can be
> an issue. Thus it can be preferable to allow also changing the
> integration time - but mitigate the scale impact by also changing the gain
> underneath. Eg, if integration time change doubles the measured values,
> the driver can reduce the HW-gain to half.
>
> The theory of the computations of gain-time-scale is simple. However,
> some people (undersigned) got that implemented wrong for more than once.
>
> Add some gain-time-scale helpers in order to not dublicate errors in all
> drivers needing these computations.
>
> Signed-off-by: Matti Vaittinen <mazziesaccount@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> ---
> Currently it is only BU27034 using these in this series. I am however working
> with drivers for RGB sensors BU27008 and BU27010 which have similar
> [gain - integration time - scale] - relation. I hope sending those
> follows soon after the BU27034 is done.

> +/**
> + * iio_gts_find_new_gain_sel_by_old_gain_time - compensate for time change
> + * @gts:		Gain time scale descriptor
> + * @old_gain:		Previously set gain
> + * @old_time_sel:	Selector corresponding previously set time
> + * @new_time_sel:	Selector corresponding new time to be set
> + * @new_gain:		Pointer to value where new gain is to be written
> + *
> + * We may want to mitigate the scale change caused by setting a new integration
> + * time (for a light sensor) by also updating the (HW)gain. This helper computes
> + * new gain value to maintain the scale with new integration time.
> + *
> + * Return: 0 on success. -EINVAL if gain matching the new time is not found.

Here we need to document another return value denote whether the 
@new_gain was updated.

> + */
> +int iio_gts_find_new_gain_sel_by_old_gain_time(struct iio_gts *gts,
> +					       int old_gain, int old_time_sel,
> +					       int new_time_sel, int *new_gain)
> +{
> +	const struct iio_itime_sel_mul *itime_old, *itime_new;
> +	u64 scale;
> +	int ret;
> +
> +	itime_old = iio_gts_find_itime_by_sel(gts, old_time_sel);
> +	if (!itime_old)
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	itime_new = iio_gts_find_itime_by_sel(gts, new_time_sel);
> +	if (!itime_new)
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	ret = iio_gts_get_scale_linear(gts, old_gain, itime_old->time_us,
> +				       &scale);
> +	if (ret)
> +		return ret;
> +
> +	ret = gain_get_scale_fraction(gts->max_scale, scale, itime_new->mul,
> +				      new_gain);
> +	if (ret)
> +		return ret;
> +
> +	if (!iio_gts_valid_gain(gts, *new_gain))
> +		return -EINVAL;

I would change this to -ERANGE to differentiate the case where the new 
gain was computed but was not valid. The bu27034 (and 
not-yet-fully-finished bu27008) driver uses the computed gain to find 
closest matching gain the hardware supports. I am not super happy with 
the -ERANGE, as it is also possible the gain is in the "range" of 
supported gains but not _exactly_ supported one. In a sense -EINVAL 
would be more correct. The invalid time could in a sense be interpreted 
as an "time selector not found" - so maybe the -ENOENT could be somehow 
tolerated. Still, in my opinion the invalid integration time is very 
much more an -EINVAL than anything else...

> +
> +	return 0;
> +}

I will fix this for v7.