Author Topic: Battery Status  (Read 4234 times)

duffman

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Battery Status
« 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
Sharp Zaurus 6000L
512mb SanDisk SD card

Miami_Bob

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Battery Status
« Reply #1 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
Bob W - Miami FL
--------------------
"The legs of the duck are short and
 cannot be lengthened without distress
 to the duck.

The legs of the crane are long and
 cannot be shortened without distress
 to the crane."

Chuang-tzu

--------------------
C860 main - Sharp 1.40 JP ROM
Language conversion by hand

alts: Cacko 1.22 / OZ 3.5.1 / pdaXrom
512Mb SanDisk SD (x2) / 512Mb SanDisk CF (x2)
Lexar 1Gb CF / AmbiCom WL1100C-CF 802.11b WiFi

Out of Hp200LX, from HP100LX, via HP95LX
--------------------
Desktop MegaTower c/ twin DataPort HD racks;
12 removable HDs with multi OSs - no waiting.

--------------------

Mickeyl

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Battery Status
« Reply #2 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.
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Michael 'Mickey' Lauer | Embedded Linux Freelancer | www.Vanille-Media.de
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duffman

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Battery Status
« Reply #3 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?
Sharp Zaurus 6000L
512mb SanDisk SD card

lardman

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Battery Status
« Reply #4 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
C750 OZ3.5.4 (GPE, 2.6.x kernel)
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Serial GPS, WCF-12, Socket Ethernet & BT, Ratoc USB
WinXP, Mandriva

Miami_Bob

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Battery Status
« Reply #5 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
Bob W - Miami FL
--------------------
"The legs of the duck are short and
 cannot be lengthened without distress
 to the duck.

The legs of the crane are long and
 cannot be shortened without distress
 to the crane."

Chuang-tzu

--------------------
C860 main - Sharp 1.40 JP ROM
Language conversion by hand

alts: Cacko 1.22 / OZ 3.5.1 / pdaXrom
512Mb SanDisk SD (x2) / 512Mb SanDisk CF (x2)
Lexar 1Gb CF / AmbiCom WL1100C-CF 802.11b WiFi

Out of Hp200LX, from HP100LX, via HP95LX
--------------------
Desktop MegaTower c/ twin DataPort HD racks;
12 removable HDs with multi OSs - no waiting.

--------------------