[opensuse] Battery Widget in KDE
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements? The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%. Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about the state of the same battery? -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 9/12/2013 4:42 PM, John Andersen wrote:
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements?
The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%.
Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about the state of the same battery?
For the record, the KSysGuard value agrees more closely with the push-button LDE lights on the battery itself. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Thursday, September 12, 2013 04:45:32 PM John Andersen wrote:
On 9/12/2013 4:42 PM, John Andersen wrote:
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements?
The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%.
Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about the state of the same battery?
For the record, the KSysGuard value agrees more closely with the push-button LDE lights on the battery itself.
Trolling One shows the remaining power on battery. Another showing actual charged power on the battery. Check the sum is 100% :-) -- Ricardo Chung | Panama Member openSUSE Projects -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements?
The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%.
Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about
same battery?
For the record, the KSysGuard value agrees more closely with the
On 13/09/13 01:45, John Andersen wrote:> On 9/12/2013 4:42 PM, John Andersen wrote: the state of the push-button
LDE lights on the battery itself.
I've noticed a change which may have come about with KDE 4.11.1 (I'm on the 4.11 Release repo in oS 12.3) but I can't be sure. Having just acquired a secondhand laptop pre-loaded with Ubuntu I noted the battery does not charge to full capacity and would typically start at around two-thirds before draining. When I installed openSUSE and KDE with 4.11 it showed a similar reading, but the last couple of times I've unplugged (having just updated to 4.11.1 a week ago), it starts at a full 100%. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean my battery has miraculously relearned how to recover full performance, just that either by accident or by design a developer has modified how the state gets shown. Cheers, Peter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 9/13/2013 2:50 AM, Peter wrote:
When I installed openSUSE and KDE with 4.11 it showed a similar reading, but the last couple of times I've unplugged (having just updated to 4.11.1 a week ago), it starts at a full 100%. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean my battery has miraculously relearned how to recover full performance, just that either by accident or by design a developer has modified how the state gets shown.
What is this "IT" you refer to? The widget? or Ksysguard? Also, the widget does different things when plugged in than it does when running on battery. When it says full charge while on the mains, unplug it, and withing a few seconds the widget will fall from 100% to what ever your battery can handle given its present age. See my other post in this thread. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 13/09/13 21:18, John Andersen wrote:
On 9/13/2013 2:50 AM, Peter wrote:
When I installed openSUSE and KDE with 4.11 it showed a similar reading, but the last couple of times I've unplugged (having just updated to 4.11.1 a week ago), it starts at a full 100%. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean my battery has miraculously relearned how to recover full performance, just that either by accident or by design a developer has modified how the state gets shown.
What is this "IT" you refer to? The widget? or Ksysguard?
No I meant the widget in the system tray.
Also, the widget does different things when plugged in than it does when running on battery. When it says full charge while on the mains, unplug it, and withing a few seconds the widget will fall from 100% to what ever your battery can handle given its present age.
That's the thing though. It (the widget) was behaving like that until last week, but twice this week when I unplugged and switched to battery power it started at a full 100%. So it seems the widget's behaviour has recently been changed.
See my other post in this thread.
Yes I hadn't refreshed my email folder this morning when I sent me earlier post so hadn't read all your explanations.
Oh, and another thing. Upon boot up after a "full charge", (that is, charged till the charging circuit gave and called it full) if the battery does not approach some substantial percentage of its designed capacity, you will get a pop-up notification that the battery needs replacement.
The best mine achieves these days is about 47% of design capacity. I get the warning every re-boot. Seems not to re-occur on a resume, it has to be a boot from off.
The good part of all this is the batteries for older lap tops are pretty cheap these days, unless your laptop is really old.
Are you talking about KDE here? I'm not sure I like the sound of that. This laptop I've got hold of may be a bit old but it was renowned in its time for its good battery life and has the maximum 9-cell version installed, which in theory would give about 6 hours or more of life when new. That means that at 47% it would still be giving me around 3 hours, which was the very most I ever got, initially, from my old machine. So for me that's good and not worth chucking, and hence an annoying popup on every blasted boot nagging me about it is the sort of thing that turned me off using Windows a decade ago. That sort of bullshit should at least be configurable in KDE. Tweaking everything to be just right is KDE is so good at. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 9/13/2013 12:43 PM, Peter wrote:
On 13/09/13 21:18, John Andersen wrote:
Also, the widget does different things when plugged in than it does when running on battery. When it says full charge while on the mains, unplug it, and withing a few seconds the widget will fall from 100% to what ever your battery can handle given its present age.
That's the thing though. It (the widget) was behaving like that until last week, but twice this week when I unplugged and switched to battery power it started at a full 100%. So it seems the widget's behaviour has recently been changed.
For me, it takes the widget 2 to 10 seconds to jump down from 100% to the "true" percent. After you've done this once in any given boot, it seems to instantly jump to the "true" percent. This widget seems to have a bifurcated personality.
Oh, and another thing. Upon boot up after a "full charge", (that is, charged till the charging circuit gave and called it full) if the battery does not approach some substantial percentage of its designed capacity, you will get a pop-up notification that the battery needs replacement.
Are you talking about KDE here? I'm not sure I like the sound of that. This laptop I've got hold of may be a bit old but it was renowned in its time for its good battery life and has the maximum 9-cell version installed, which in theory would give about 6 hours or more of life when new. That means that at 47% it would still be giving me around 3 hours, which was the very most I ever got, initially, from my old machine. So for me that's good and not worth chucking, and hence an annoying popup on every blasted boot nagging me about it is the sort of thing that turned me off using Windows a decade ago. That sort of bullshit should at least be configurable in KDE. Tweaking everything to be just right is KDE is so good at.
Hey, calm down, ;-) its a tiny pop-up that appears near the system tray, and goes away after a few seconds. You don't have to respond to it. Further, like I mentioned, it only happens on first boot from power off. I virtually never power off any more, I just suspend. The machine will several last days on suspend, and resume is almost instant, so why would I want to actually shut it off... I suppose you can kill it off by hacking ~/.kde4/share/config/powerdevil.notifyrc and removing brokenbattery segment entirely. This seems to be hardcoded for anthing less than 50% in the current version of powerdevilcore.cpp https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/111768/diff/?expand=1 also here: https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file?file=powerdevil_46branchupdate.diff&package=kdebase4-wallpapers&project=home%3Asaroengels%3Abranches%3AKDE%3ADistro%3AStable&rev=72014d888633dfc8d138a26656243711 -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 9/13/2013 2:50 AM, Peter wrote:
On 13/09/13 01:45, John Andersen wrote:> On 9/12/2013 4:42 PM, John Andersen wrote:
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements?
The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%.
Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about the state of the same battery?
For the record, the KSysGuard value agrees more closely with the push-button LDE lights on the battery itself.
I've noticed a change which may have come about with KDE 4.11.1 (I'm on the 4.11 Release repo in oS 12.3) but I can't be sure. Having just acquired a secondhand laptop pre-loaded with Ubuntu I noted the battery does not charge to full capacity and would typically start at around two-thirds before draining. When I installed openSUSE and KDE with 4.11 it showed a similar reading, but the last couple of times I've unplugged (having just updated to 4.11.1 a week ago), it starts at a full 100%. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean my battery has miraculously relearned how to recover full performance, just that either by accident or by design a developer has modified how the state gets shown.
Cheers, Peter
Oh, and another thing. Upon boot up after a "full charge", (that is, charged till the charging circuit gave and called it full) if the battery does not approach some substantial percentage of its designed capacity, you will get a pop-up notification that the battery needs replacement. The best mine achieves these days is about 47% of design capacity. I get the warning every re-boot. Seems not to re-occur on a resume, it has to be a boot from off. The good part of all this is the batteries for older lap tops are pretty cheap these days, unless your laptop is really old. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 9/12/2013 4:42 PM, John Andersen wrote:
Where does this thing get its battery state measurements?
The widget in the taskbar as well as the plasma thingie on the desktop indicate 32% while the battery level in KSysGuard indicates 68%.
Why would two utilities from the same release of KDE differ about the state of the same battery?
Answering my own question.... For the Google Spiders: (Pardon my pedantry) KSysGuard appears to be calculating its capacity based on last full charge capacity. The Widget is basing its charge on the Design Capacity. On an older battery, there will be a significant difference between the two. An old battery will never charge to its design capacity. KSysGuard's calculation is more accurate for any given age of battery. Example: (from my Aging Dell Inspiron 9400) poulsbo:~ # cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info present: yes design capacity: 4800 mAh <------- Full Capacity when new last full capacity: 2388 mAh <------- Full capacity today. battery technology: rechargeable design voltage: 11100 mV design capacity warning: 480 mAh design capacity low: 145 mAh cycle count: 0 capacity granularity 1: 48 mAh capacity granularity 2: 48 mAh model number: DELL F51336 serial number: 883 battery type: LION OEM info: Sanyo Today, the charge circuitry shut down when the battery reached 2388 mAh. This "Full charge" occurs when the battery reaches the voltage threshold and the current drops to three percent of the rated current. (The charging current drops as the battery gets closer to a full charge due to increasing battery resistance) A battery is also considered fully charged if the current levels off and cannot go down further. Old Batteries will simply not charge to their design capacity. KSysGuard reports your battery percent full by measuring the current remaining charge compared to the last known "Full Charge". So it is reporting the percent of battery life in your battery compared to a "Full Charge" given your battery's capabilities as the are today not as they were when the battery was new. So after a "Full Charge", my ancient dell battery reports this as soon as I start using the battery poulsbo:~ # cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state present: yes capacity state: ok charging state: discharging present rate: 3047 mA remaining capacity: 2226 mAh <-------- This is all I can expect these days. present voltage: 11906 mV KSysGuard reports that as 93% capacity. (2226 / 2388 * 100) The Battery Widget on the other hand reports that as 46% capacity based on original "factory full charge" 2226 / 4800 * 100. So BOTH KSysGuard and the Widget are correct, they are just measuring different things. The widget's calculation method is use by the power management settings to decide when the computer should sleep, or shut down or hibernate, because this gives a more consistent expectation of battery capacity (minutes) remaining, allowing for a proper shutdown. 2% of design life is consistently mappable to minutes. 2% of current life is a shrinking window. Ricardo: You were closer to right than you realized. ;-) -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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John Andersen -
Peter -
Ricardo Chung