Hardware killswitch alternative

[wibble]

I've seen several threads that has mentioned that the kill switches are a bit hard to reach and awkward to use in a smooth way. At the same time I understand that it is an added complexity in the manufacturing process to make them external.

My suggestion.

As a user I can in principle not verify that the kill switches work but have to trust the hardware manufacturer. So I wonder if it would be possible to instead have a LED solution that can show if the HW is disabled, these LED's can be assembled in a way that software can not turn them on/off without also impact the power mgmt to these components.

The good things with this is that it can make it possible to use software switches instead which can be very easy and convenient.

The drawback is of course that there would be need for extra hardware drivers specifically for this device, but maybe it can be worked into some sort of standard.

There are many details to figure out here. For example it is important that the software can not control when the LEDs are turned on at all, so either they are constantly lit or there is one external test button that can be used to check the state to ensure that the software can not turn on/off only before showing the LED state.

Just wanted to share the idea.

If you don't trust the manufacturer to wire up the hardware switches as they say they do then why would you trust them to wire up the LEDs as you want them?

In practice you can verify that the hardware modules no longer respond to the kernel you supply when the hardware switches are off. Depending on skill level you may be able to inspect the board and test voltages on pins to see that it is wired as promised.