Pandora Battery Upgrade

[borgqueenx]

from the unoffical blog and from twitter: http://twitter.com/Craigix/status/3700762975

14 hours of battery life means underclocked and some stuff on standby or shut down? (wifi for example or bluetooth)

 

[WizardStan]

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/45893-unofficial-openpandora-community-blog/page__view__findpost__p__752664

 

[mindlord]

The datasheet rates these batteries as 4250mAh, 4200mAh minimum but they stamp 4000mAh on the side of the batteries. I’ve been working on the configuration file for the battery fuel gauge and if I try to set it to 4000, the battery still runs for most of an hour even though it says 0%. I had no choice but to use 4200 as the calibration value. The last battery I calculated was about 4230 so the datasheet seems accurate.

14 hours was a number that seems likely with half screen brightness, down clocked for something like PicoDrive that doesn’t need the high MHz and maybe even Smart Reflex enabled. It’s all a plausible combination but you can’t fit that into a tweet.
by MWeston September 2, 2009 at 6:16 am

...Nugget...

 

[borgqueenx]

Sorry guys i dont check every thread every day...

 

[mindlord]

Understandable, my nugget is actually from the UOCB, so it took me a few minutes to re-find too.

 

[Squidge]

Thats what the search function is for

Also, you posted this in news and in this forum. One or the other is fine, but not both. Do not cross-post.

(It would also be best if it actually was news...)

 

[borgqueenx]

Thats what the search function is for

Also, you posted this in news and in this forum. One or the other is fine, but not both. Do not cross-post.

(It would also be best if it actually was news...)

Well the topic was not approved in the news section so i just posted it here.
And usally updates like these appear in a new topic so i didnt used the search function, my bad, will do that next time.

And this is not news??!!! Its a very nice news update post to me

 

[Enverex]

Plus you kinda posted the news as a question.... the news should be concise, contain the solid facts and make complete sense...

 

[Squidge]

Ok, let me rephrase that. It was news, but wasn't really front page material. Plus, it was something a lot of people already knew about (not all, but a fair amount).

In this cases, we normally move the news post to the general forum, but then sometimes notice that it has already been posted to the general forum and have to delete it. Thats why we ask only to post in one forum.

 

[Kramy]

I didn't, but I'm quite happy about it. As far as bragging rights go, "12 hours easy" is better than eight.

 

[Exophase]

I'm confused, I thought it was always 4200. If not, what was it for the last battery tests?

 

[craigix]

I'm confused, I thought it was always 4200. If not, what was it for the last battery tests?

These are the first 'real' battery tests using the fuel gauge + final battery. The previous tests were not accurate enough.

The fuel gauge is a seriously awesome hardware feature which I think people are going to love. It tells you the exact drain and time remaining to seconds. No more 'four bars of guess work'. Plug in a USB device and see exactly what its pulling, crank up the CPU speed and see exactly how it effects battery life.

It should lead to people getting better battery life in the same way cars with real time MPG calculations lead to you finding the perfect cruising speed.

 

[borgqueenx]

I'm confused, I thought it was always 4200. If not, what was it for the last battery tests?

These are the first 'real' battery tests using the fuel gauge + final battery. The previous tests were not accurate enough.

The fuel gauge is a seriously awesome hardware feature which I think people are going to love. It tells you the exact drain and time remaining to seconds. No more 'four bars of guess work'. Plug in a USB device and see exactly what its pulling, crank up the CPU speed and see exactly how it effects battery life.

It should lead to people getting better battery life in the same way cars with real time MPG calculations lead to you finding the perfect cruising speed.

cool that sounds awesome! So we can see all chips and programs that are eating the battery life and shut them down if we want?

 

[Ollonk]

Anything is better than the 45 minutes I get from my laptop <_<
But free upgrades are always nice!

 

[droneb]

the fuel gauge and the batt time going nuts is maybe why "i want a panda, i want it nooooooow"
(hehe no pressure guys just joking, but please i want to have it before i start the disassembly of my
Xmas 3)

yet i still dont get the Fuel Gauge stuff, it will have an Xternal Display or it will comm via Software to the OS?
the old Led BCD displays, or maybe a mini matrix display.

 

[lulzfish]

yet i still dont get the Fuel Gauge stuff, it will have an Xternal Display or it will comm via Software to the OS?
the old Led BCD displays, or maybe a mini matrix display.

It's a feature of the OMAP chip thingie that will communicate to the kernel via ACPI or whatever.
To be honest, I don't see what the big deal, my laptop also has this sort of feature, perhaps not as accurate:

Battery:
Design capacity: 7200 mAh
Last full capacity: 7191 mAh
Capacity granularity: 72 mAh
Charging state: charged
Remaining capacity: 7200 mAh
Present rate: 1 mA (It's plugged in, not charging or discharging...?)

All found somewhere in /proc/acpi

 

[craigix]

It isn't a feature of the OMAP, it is a separate chip. I'm not aware of it being in any other handheld.

 

[borgqueenx]

It isn't a feature of the OMAP, it is a separate chip. I'm not aware of it being in any other handheld.

a chip only measuring battery life and power draining?

 

[droneb]

i believe it is a very small and simple MC with good AD hardware.

 

[Squidge]

A seperate chip? I would have thought measuring the voltage drop across a resistor by feeding it into an analog input pin would be enough to determine the current load on the system, then you could guess battery life from that if you had somewhere for persisent storage.

Battery life is the most difficult part to guess. They can guess life by what the battery should be capable of, how much current the battery has taken and how much has been drawn off it, but give the system a year of discharge/recharge cycles and all of a sudden your system shuts down unexpectedly at 25% capacity left because a cell in the battery has died.

I have seen this kind of thing in a handheld, but to be honest, it was a chinese thing that played games incredibly poor (the preinstalled ones were breakout and tetris), but the sat nav was pretty damn good. It didn't tell you the draw on the battery directly, but it did tell you the estimated battery life remaining which increased and decreased depending on what you were doing, so you could say it did it indirectly.