OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => Sharp Zaurus => Model Specific Forums => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => 6000 - Tosa => Topic started by: duffman on May 11, 2004, 04:39:33 pm

Title: Battery Status
Post by: duffman on May 11, 2004, 04:39:33 pm

Hey folks, was wondering if anyone has found any good 3rd part battery status indicators. The one that comes with the Z is, frankly, pretty useless. I believe it can oinly show you if the battery is full, 75%, 50%, 25% or \"low\". I found a nice looking one on the ZSI but the pkg wouldn\'t install correctly.

Thanks!
Dustin

Title: Battery Status
Post by: Miami_Bob on May 11, 2004, 05:18:39 pm

Dystin -

If you are looking at the Launcherx-BatteryApplet, I can tell you how I manually installed it on my C860 (none of the IPKG would work through), but you will probably be very disappointed with it. Shout back if you want the How-To.

Bob W
Miami FL

Title: Battery Status
Post by: Mickeyl on May 11, 2004, 06:29:27 pm

The problem is not the status indicator, it\'s the lineo kernel driver reading out the status information using only 4 steps. The hardware is capable of more fine granular sensing.

Title: Battery Status
Post by: duffman on May 11, 2004, 07:10:25 pm

Yes the  Launcherx-BatteryApplet is the one I saw. Though I take it the applet doesn\'t display the battery info that well huh?

Title: Battery Status
Post by: lardman on May 12, 2004, 05:31:44 am

It has to get the info from the kernel, so no matter how well it can display the info it gets, if the kernel info doesn\'t have fine granularity nor will the applet, etc.

You need a different/patched kernel.

OZ3.2 has patches applied which make the kernel battery granularity better, but there\'s currently no version of OZ for the 6000 (though I\'m sure work will progress with volunteers and Sharp releasing the kernel source - they may have already done this?)


Si

Title: Battery Status
Post by: Miami_Bob on May 12, 2004, 04:57:58 pm

Quote

Yes the  Launcherx-BatteryApplet is the one I saw. Though I take it the applet doesn\'t display the battery info that well huh?

Yep. I was highly disappointed. It kept \"forgetting\" all its stored data (time run, etc) every time there was any change at all to the applets tray. It never showed any significant changes in battery level. Even within the limited 4 point granularity mention by other posts here. It allowed my battery to run low without any warning. I finally went back to the regular battery applet.

And this after searching nearly forever to just find a downloadable iPK of it then having the install scripts choke & figuring out how to load it by hand. It looked so neat but didn\'t work as indicated. If the author ever corrects the problems, I\'ll certainly try it again.

The other posts here are interesting, but the applet, IMHO, has more problems than just lack of granularity. At least on the C860.


Bob W
Miami FL