how can i tell if it's charging?

[gibberish]

i don't think i've ever had a fully charged pandora, i'd need to wait around for about 14 hours at the rate it seems to charge.


but my question is, what indicator is there that the machine is charging? sometimes a solid red light turns on at the right hand side, other times it blinks and other times it doesn't turn on at all. currently all i have is a green light on the far right, but the charger is plugged in. how can i tell if it's charging?

 

[Prometheus]

If it's charging, the red light should come on and stay on, and in Xfce the battery-bar will turn white instead of green, and the percentage will slowly start to climb.


I've not heard of an issue like this before, so I don't know what's going on with this.

 

[gibberish]

this has been a problem since may 2010 when first received it, and tbh is the main reason it's been sat collecting dust for months. i've plugged and re-plugged and re-plugged the charger and finally managed to make the red light stay on so i guess it's charging but there's definitely something wrong. i remember the last time this happened i finally managed to get it to charge but in the morning when i checked it it was down to 10% battery again (almost as though it fully charged and then started running off the battery again).


if i turn pandora off and plug the charger in then pandora turns on (i think is normal?) which makes me think it's not a problem with the charger itself. so in it's current state (lid closed for screen off, red light on) then the battery should read 100% in the morning right?

 

[Prometheus]

I think whether it reads that in the morning depends on whether you've got Hotfix 6 installed or not (if you have it installed, it's likely to be close to it - if not, I gather that it probably won't be) - prior to that, it's my understanding that that wouldn't necessarily be the case.


This said, I never trust electronics to charge overnight, so I always charge them during times when I can keep an eye on them doing so, so I've never left mine to charge overnight, myself.

 

[gruso]

Even in perfect circumstances, the battery will not necessarily show 100% in the morning. If left plugged in, it will reach capacity, then discharge several %, then charge again. This is a pretty standard measure in electronics AFAIK. That percentage used to be about 10-15% IIRC, so depending on the timing of your unplugging, you might end up with a charge of <90%. I believe this process has been refined since I last read about it. Apologies for my vagueness here; someone more up to date on that might fill in the blanks. [edit] Prometheus has clarified that somewhat - it should be much better in HF6.


This doesn't address your current problem however. Pardon le pun. Have you tried another charger? There seem to be a few instances of bad Pandora chargers, so it might be worth buying or borrowing a PSP charger to try.

 

[gibberish]

i did a clean install of HF6 before i put the machine to charge, and this morning it's as you say - somewhere between 90 and 100% charged so that's good. i've never seen the meter so high before. now i just need to get to the bottom of the charger issue. i don't have a psp unfortunately, maybe i can borrow one.

 

[diligentcircle]

i did a clean install of HF6 before i put the machine to charge, and this morning it's as you say - somewhere between 90 and 100% charged so that's good. i've never seen the meter so high before. now i just need to get to the bottom of the charger issue. i don't have a psp unfortunately, maybe i can borrow one.

No need for the PSP itself, just a PSP charger.

 

[DrCJBoduma]

sorry for gravedigging, but my pandora has started to behave in a very similar manner. it seems to only charge(red light) sporadically. I thought it was just a faulty wire,but got a new psp charger and still the same thing. the red light comes on sometimes but then will go off for no good reason.


any ideas


CJ

 

[mcobit]

Does the pandora charge anyways? Have this, too and even if the light isn't on, it will charge anyway.

 

[WizardStan]

Open a terminal and type


cat /sys/class/power_supply/bq27500-0/current_now


A positive value means it is charging, a negative value means discharging, regardless of what the charge LED is doing.

 

[DrCJBoduma]

thank you both i will try and find out shortly


CJ

 

[DrCJBoduma]

no it's not charging when the light goes out. it always seems to come on when i plug it in, but will just go out sometimes. if i move the wire around it seems to work occasional, but i'm not sure if its the wire(although i've tried 2) the connection in the pandora, or conformation bias


ps wizardstan is there anyway to get a 'live' version of the output from


cat /sys/class/power_supply/bq27500-0/current_now


rather than just a single value at that moment. might help me.


cheers


CJ

 

[WizardStan]

You could use a script to loop and get the value every minute or so

while [ 1 ]; do

    date

    cat /sys/class/power_supply/bq27500-0/current_now

    sleep 60

done